


A Fine Balance

by grayergray



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Adventure, Comfort, F/M, Longing, Pirates, Romance, back story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 20:12:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 29,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3460424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayergray/pseuds/grayergray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post S2-E5</p><p>He chose Max over her, and it broke Anne Bonny's heart. In the aftermath she is forced to make a decision to realign herself with an old ally and return to Carolina for the first time since she fled with Jack Rackham. </p><p>Jack is forced to make an unwanted alliance in order to find the woman he loves, hoping he's not too late. </p><p>And what, exactly, is Charles Vane's role in all of this?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

                He chose her over me. He chose _her_ over _me._ He chose _HER_ over _ME_! the refrain continued, without fail or falter, as Anne Bonny worked her way through Nassau. Above her head, as if in tune with the woman’s mood, the sky began to darken, signalling the coming of what would no doubt be a typically brutal tropical storms.

Weather took Nassau the way a man took a woman, Jack had commented once while they waited out a storm back when they were fresh in love and he was keen on constantly impressing her with his wit and words as he was with his sexual prowess.

“It comes with a swiftness and a violence, you see,” he spoke softly, drawing a hand under Anne’s chin, tipping her chin to look up at him. He explained that the weather tries to bend Nassau to its will, but Nassau is a proud woman, and regardless of the heat, or the rain, she will remain, but she is no more capable of leaving the weather than a woman was capable of leaving a man she loved.

                The bitter irony was not lost on Anne this day.

                The air smelt like lightning and it was heavy with the promise of rain, humid enough to make breathing difficult. She would be wise to get inside somewhere, but there was only one place she could think to go and expect any peace, so while the men and women of Nassau flooded the streets and rushed to get home ahead of the storm, Anne took her time. A little water never hurt anyone.

This wasn’t the first time Max had caused problems for Bonny, but this was the first time the whore had been able to drive a wedge between her and Jack. Hell, this was the first time anyone had been able to accomplish that feat. If Anne didn’t hate the whore so much, she might have been impressed.

The city was under siege, but Anne wasn’t afraid. Flint’s guns would avoid the Inn and the Tavern, mostly because Guthrie and her like seemed to have aligned themselves with the Galion in the bay and Vane’s monsters knew not to lay a hand on her if at all they wished to keep it. She had “survived” Charles Vane, those were Jack’s words. In reality, Anne Bonny had done more than survive under the captaincy of a Mister Charles Vane.

She had found a shadow to hide; he offered protection from the cut eyes which seemed to be ever cast in her direction these days. When aligned with the likes of Vane, Bonny’s violence seemed more… in line. He didn’t make her look normal, but his strength and her violence worked well together, and when Jack’s charm and wits were added to the mix, the trio had made a nearly unbeatable team.

                If it hadn’t been for that cunt Guthrie and the whore, Max, Anne thought, finding herself standing right in front of the Guthrie Tavern, the base of operations for their fencing as well as the only other place on this island Anne could get an unpoisoned bottle of rum and something to eat.

                Her fine boned hand reached out and pulled on the coarse, iron work door pull only to find the door bolted from the inside. “The fuck?” Anne muttered to herself, tugging on it once more, then a third time just to be sure it wasn’t stuck but was indeed locked. When she heard the wooden bolt jump in its iron casements she settled on that yes, in fact the door was indeed bolted from the inside.

                Back door it is, then, she thought to herself and set off towards the rear of the building. Guthrie, and most tavern owners for that matter, rarely thought to bar the back door. Even if they were trying to keep the general public out, most times they still wanted their staff to be able to enter the premises.

Anne found the back door, as she suspected, unlocked, though what she hadn’t suspected was that she would also find the kitchen attached to it entirely empty, large cauldrons left unattended, pulled off of the fires and stoves, and coarse bread and roasted pig carcasses sitting out amid the omnipresent buzz of insects.

She waved off a few of the black winged beasts and tore a crust of bread, stuffing it with a piece of hard cheese and a chunk of pork before pausing. The unmistakable sounds of a fight were going on above her head. As Bonny paused, a red eyebrow arching lightly as her head cocked, she could hear the tell take scrapping and scuffing of feet, bodies and furniture being forced a round a room across uneven wooden floors in a random fashion. That wasn’t surprising; it seemed almost natural that a fight would break out in the tavern, especially when so many men were under so much pressure. The constant bombardment from Flint’s ship in the bay was bound to set people off. What did surprise her, however, was the utter silence which the fight was going on under. There were the wet smacks and grunts of the two men involved, but not an ounce of the requisite cheering which usually accompanied a rowdy row in the tavern.

She took a bite of her makeshift bun and grabbed a bottle of rum with her free hand, hip bumping the door open and coming across a very stunned, and somewhat frightened, looking Eleanor Guthrie. She was not alone, and compared to the worried face of the other woman, Guthrie was proving to be the pinnacle of calm. Anne eyed them both skeptically as recognition registered on the blonde woman’s face.

“What the fuck are you doing here!?” she caterwauled at Anne, her surprise registering almost as much as the indignation. “Didn’t you see the front door was locked? We’re not open!”

“Came in the back,” Anne said, stuffing another bite of cheese, bread and meat into her mouth, chewing coarsely, and clearly unaffected by Guthrie’s ire. She paused for a moment to swallow the mouthful before tipping her hat covered face upwards towards the roof where the sounds of the scuffle were even more evident. “What’s all this?”

“Flint came ashore,” Eleanor said, her blue eyes following Anne’s up to the roof.

“Guess he’s not alone?”

“Charles Vane,” the other woman, her eyes impossibly large, but intelligent, boring into Anne as she felt the uncompromising urge to step back in spite of herself.

“I see.”

“He’s going to kill Flint,” Guthrie insisted, her voice clearly filled with concern.

“And with it, every chance this island has at legitimacy,” the older woman commented, still concerned but lacking Eleanor’s more… excitable nature.

She saw the two women bring their eyes back to her after all three had their attention stolen by an animalistic growl followed by a heavy thud and the sound of glass shattering. There was a moment of silence between the women before Anne turned abruptly, stuffing the last of her make shift meal into her mouth and chasing it with a swig of straight rum. The alcohol soaked the bread and meat, cutting down somewhat on the burn and the choking feeling the mealy bread gave her throat, allowing her to swallow the lump all that more easy.

“You can’t go up there!” Eleanor protested, chasing after Anne with the brunette in tow. She reached out as if to grab Bonny’s arm but thought better of the idea, recoiling her hand and pausing at the base of the grand staircase.

“Are you going to stop me?” Not a lot caused Eleanor Guthrie to stop and reconsider herself, but the look on Anne’s face held her back. There was coldness, even by Bonny’s standard, in those eyes, and the grim set on her mouth. She didn’t know Anne well, but she knew people, and this was a person who was looking for blood. She had seen that look on Charles’ face before, when she had summarily taken away his captaincy. Seeing it reflected on the softer features of a woman was even more chilling.

“What are you going to do?” the dark haired woman asked, standing behind Eleanor, looking quite a bit less useless than the younger woman, her voice strong and her expression that of a woman who had lived through quite a bit, and had spent most of her life in control of those events, even if it was through sleight of hand.

Anne thrust the fat bottomed, green glass bottle to Guthrie and settled her hands on her sabres on her waist, her eyebrows rising and head twitching slightly to the side. It was a barely perceptible motion, but the implication was clear. She was going to stop what was going on upstairs so Guthrie could reopen the tavern and she could get an actual decent meal that wasn’t crawling with bugs.

She turned away and managed to climb a full three steps before Guthrie called out to her.

“Wait!” the woman’s voice was clearly distraught, she must be over thinking things, Anne thought to herself. The red head hesitated but then stopped; turning silently to wait for whatever was so important that she had to stop Anne at this point. There was a moment of pregnant silence between them before the blonde spoke again. “Don’t kill Flint…” she whispered.

Anne’s blue eyes locked on Guthrie, then the doe eyed woman to her left. The elder woman merely nodded as Anne met her eyes, possessing what Anne thought of as incredibly regal bearing.

“Fine,” she muttered then continued skipping up the stairs.


	2. Chapter 2

The two were locked in Eleanor’s salon, and from the sounds of it had already managed to knock most of the furniture out of the way. Lucky for Anne the door wasn’t locked, hell it was barely even closed. She guess Charles must have been too distracted by the sight of his prey to fully close the door, which begs the question why those mewling cows remained downstairs rather than doing what needed to be done.

Heavens, she thought to herself. Some people were simply too fucking gutless.

One benefit to carrying one’s blades without a scarab or proper leather sheath, they were silent when drawn. Anne pulled the blade from her left hip out with her right hand, pressing her left against the door easily, nudging it just enough to slip through.

                Vane had landed as many hits as he had taken, she noted, as both men seemed equally bloody and the room was filled with the heavy, heavy musk of masculine sweat. Currently, the men had fallen to the floor, seemingly through one of the wooden tables which occupied the centre of the room.

                Must’ve been that big crash, Anne thought to herself as she crept towards them, silently padding into the room as if on cat’s feet, blade held low but tight, ready to react. Neither had noticed a third person entering the room, which served her fine. When it came to men of their size, conviction and tempers it always served Anne’s needs best by capitalising on surprise.

                Flint had Vane on his back, bearing down on him with a dagger poised to plunge into the younger man’s throat. Vane, for his part, was doing a good job at holding off the former Naval Officer, his superior strength not quite enough to completely over power the might of Flint’s bulk and gravity combined.

                Whether it was her shadow coming over Vane’s face, the sound of her voice of the feel of her cutlass pressing against the soft piece of flesh just behind the man’s ear, Anne would never know, but Flint froze at once, and so did Vane, like rats caught fucking when the lights were turned back on with no idea of how to proceed.

                “Not allowed to kill you,” she growled, pressing harder, nudging and leading Flint off Vane with the press of her sword to his throat until he was completely clear of the other man, though still on his knees. “Said nothin’ about takin an arm, though.” Her steps, in stark contrast to the light hunter’s footsteps she had employed whilst sneaking into the room, were heavier now, deliberately trying to be imposing which, if he hadn’t a sword to his throat, Flint might find laughable. Of all the things that were fear inducing about the infamous Anne Bonny, her size was not among them.

He was a smart man, probably the smartest person in this room, and he knew that “allow” didn’t mean that Anne wouldn’t proceed if pushed. Bonny was nearly as reckless as Vane, but hardly as easy to predict. No one quite knew what moved Anne Bonny, or how to stop her, except maybe Jack Rackham, and with his presence notably absent, the wisest move was to submit to her command.

The dagger dropped to the ground with a dull thud as it hit a chunk of blood and rum stained carpet, her boot covering it quickly should Vane think it smart to try and go for it. The whole of Nassau knew she wasn’t his sword any more, and she knew sure as fuck he wasn’t her shield, and gave him no more trust than the man in front of her.

Her lip curled as she watched Flint, the two eyes equal in intensity, but the problem was Flint was smart, he knew Bonny had the high ground. This time. “They’re waiting downstairs,” she said, gesturing with a flick of her chin towards the door, basically telling him to get the fuck out.

He hesitated for a moment, and everyone in the room knew why. Animals did not respect weakness, and Flint needed to remind Bonny that he was leaving only because she had the upper hand, and that one day, she might not be so lucky, and rue be that day. Eventually, he brought himself to his feet, the dangerous tip of Anne’s sword still aimed towards him, inching the man backwards still, before he turned his back and left.

Behind her, Vane had righted himself, and occupied the personal space right behind Anne’s shoulder, dropping himself over her. “The fuck was that about?” he whispered in a voice which, were it anyone else, may inspire terror, but for Anne it merely caused a sneer and for her head to pull away from him.

She opened a gap between their bodies before turning and sheathing her blade, letting the exposed metal slide between her wide belt and body, the hilt catching and holding it in place. When her face turned to him, pale eyes and unbelievably pale skin for a sailor, there was an unreadable mix of anger and loathing across her features. That too big mouth which often got her in trouble was turned into as tight a sneer as Vane had ever seen.

“He chose her,” she eventually managed, the feat showing an exceptional amount of effort on Bonny’s part, both to keep her voice in check and her body from rebelling. Outside the promised storm had arrived, the call of Flint’s guns silenced as the ship was bombarded by the waves and heavy rain which came down with an almost righteous fury.

There were no sounds in the room, merely the howl of the wind against the leaded glass windows of the French doors.

“What?” Vane narrowed his eyes, hunching over her. It hadn’t been a week prior since he commented on the solidarity of the duo, much to each other’s detriment. Jack couldn’t have… could he?

“He chose Max,” she paused, her veneer of calm disinterest slowly twisting, the fury and utter despondence which lurked just beneath the surface of a woman wronged and looking for some poor sap to take it out on, regardless of he was the one who wronged her. The silence grew between them as he waited, knowing women only so much as to know that there was more to what she had to say; she wasn’t finished speaking yet.

“Over me.”

“Fuck,” was the only word that came to mind.

Beyond the room the island was being battered by the rain coming down in fat, violent waves, crushing vegetation and driving up berms in the sand. Truth be told, Charles would much rather be out there, even on a ship, in the midst of that storm than be in this room, right now, with Anne Bonny, watching the calm before the storm which was about to break in front of him at any moment. She was quiet, which was in many ways worse than if she were screaming and ranting. He could deal with a hysterical woman, but one possessed by an eerie calm and a capacity for violence equal to his own? Well, even Vane could be vexed from time to time.

When he decided they had stood in awkward silence long enough he grabbed the woman’s slender arm, his grip harsher than intended but she didn’t protest or resist. “C’mon, then,” he growled, as upset at the prospect of having to clean up one of Jack’s messes as he was at the idea of having to expose his crew to Bonny, but the reasoning was three fold. One, she had just taken care of Flint, though he was sure he would have been able to kill the bastard, it at least allowed him to escape, lick his wounds and come back stronger. Two, Jack had cleaned up enough of his messes in the past, if nothing else he owed Rackham that courtesy of taking care of this one. And for her credit, Anne had put almost as many bodies in the ground for him as she had for Rackham. The third, well, it was likely that Flint was planning a ground assault on the fort at some point, having one extra sword, especially one attached to a woman with nothing more to lose than a pile of pent up rage, might be helpful. He knew she was looking for a fight, for someone to hurt, and he could supply that, and thus put her back in his debt once more.

He may not be as cunning as the likes of James Flint, or as witty and charming as Jack Rackham, but Charles Vane was in no way a stupid man.

Anne didn’t protest as she was half led half dragged out of the tavern, through a secret passage way she mused Vane must have learned about during his time engaging in a rather public secret affair with Eleanor Guthrie. The duo skirted around the top of the mezzanine, muffled voices below no doubt belonging to Flint, Guthrie and the mystery woman, as they ushered Flint into Eleanor’s office to tend to his wounds, rising up to them. Vane hesitated for a second, hearing the blonde’s soft but strong assertions, but then continued on; they were too far away to accurately make out anything that was being said below, and delaying would do nothing but cost them valuable time.

Their path took them through one of the upstairs studies often used for meetings of the various captains and the Guthries, now used more often to plan how best to deal with Vane and Flint and the conflict between the two. There was a secret panel on the wall which gave way on a spring system. It was originally used to allow the fences to hide, to disappear, during shows of Imperial Force. When the British Navy sacked Nassau, Eleanor’s mother had thrown her daughter into the passages, frightened and alone, but destined to survive, even if she herself would not.

In the years that followed, a young Eleanor had shown Vane the tunnels as a means of both leaving the tavern unnoticed, but also entering, to allow them to engage in their first tryst without the knowledge of her father or her man Mister Scott seeing him coming or going.

He didn’t bet a penny on thinking that Eleanor had forgotten that she had shown him these tunnels, but right now he needed to get back to the fort without any of Flint’s men seeing him, and this was the easiest way to accomplish that.

Vane led the way, one arm outstretched, hand pressed to the wall lightly, the other gripping Bonny’s arm just above her elbow, seemingly impervious to the discomfort or bruising his grip might cause. With no natural light and no foresight to have brought a torch, Vane led the way, slowing down to a more cautious jog rather than his all-out sprint, through the rocky and uneven tunnels. Even with the caution, Anne wasn’t familiar with the terrain and it wasn’t long before she fumbled and fell to the ground.

 “Get up,” he growled, he didn’t need this slow down.

“Fuck you,” she hissed back, her eyes narrowing even though he couldn’t see it, and she had no idea whether or not she was actually scowling at him or the wall, but she got up never the less.

The pair travelled in silence otherwise, Anne making a few rough noises when he pulled or squeezed too hard for her liking, to which Vane replied by doing absolutely nothing at all.

The end was blocked by a large, old wooden door, which had grown weak and warped with time and from fifty yards out the duo could smell the chill scent of rain creeping into the tunnel. To Anne it was a welcome change from the stuffy scent of wet hair and Vane’s sweat which had filled the hole. To Vane it simply meant the easy part was done. He was going to have to sneak her back into the fort, but the fox was already planning that out.

He still had Abigail Ashe in a cell, it would do well to give the girl extra guards, but he couldn’t honestly say he trusted his men in the long term not to bring harm to her. They were only as obedient as their fear of him stretched, and in time there was always the chance that might wain. Anne, however, would be well suited to the task, both with skill and nature. She lacked the means or desire to violate the girl, and indeed a fearsome reputation which would keep many away on its own account.

The happy unintended benefit was that Anne Bonny would be safely locked up, where Vane could be sure she wasn’t going to be running through any of his crew any time soon for slights, real or imagined. Yes, he thought to himself. That would work nicely.

He shouldered the door open, lifting the latch with his free hand. Vane was forced to put his weight into it, the driving force of the storm making it difficult to even stand, the wind enough to knock a grown man to his arse. Good, he thought, eyes casting unseeing to the bay where Flint’s galleon sat, taking the worst of the storm without the benefit of solid land to cling to. If the fates were with him, the next sunrise would see the shattered remains of the ship’s hull rolling onto the beach.

Too bad he knew Flint not to be aboard, though something told Vane that he wouldn't be so lucky even if the bastard was on board.

In the rain, Vane felt a weight pull against his arm and took a moment to realise it was Anne. He had thought that the winds would be enough to knock an average built man to the ground, he had forgotten that Anne was neither of those things, and built slightly even for a woman. Suppressing a growl of frustration the Captain reached an arm around her shoulder, pulling the small form into the rain shadow caused by his body.


	3. Chapter 3

The driving rain covered their return to the fortress, and by reentering by the same secret passage way Vane left by it was easy to conceal the extra body with him. The sentries were busy guarding Ashe's daughter and tending to repairs which could be carried out during the storm to keep everyone from growing restless. They had already been couped up for two days and it was starting to show. Small fights were breaking out, and while Vane was capable of stopping them now, if things got worse, he might have a full fledged rebellion on his hands before he even managed to get back on the water.

The heavy door to his private rooms opened and he flung Anne in, the woman stumbling a few steps, soaked to the bone and resembling strongly a half drown cat in both appearance and posture.

"Stand by the fire; nothing here's gonna come close to fitting you, so you better dry out what you've got on while you can," he ordered, gesturing with a tip of his chin towards the stout, stone hearth off to one side of the room, the fire banked high and a tall stack of timber set beside it to keep it that way. She eyed him, but made her way to the centre of the mouth and unbuttoned her coat, unwinding her belt and laying her sabres across the strong, thick wooden table.

"Got a female hostage, you'll stay with her," he said, taking off his own shirt, exposing a mildly scared, well muscled and deeply tanned torso.

"The fuck? In a cell?" her voice was sharp as she turned, water dripping off her hair into the fire causing it to snap and hiss.

He calmly met her eyes, once again stepping into her personal space, challenging her in the manner of not just a man who knew he was in charge, but a dominant alpha animal. "Where else would you have me put you? I can't trust you or my crew together, and you sure as fuck aren't putting me out of my space," he argued, his deep voice held at a low volume, matching the tone of the storm barely audible through the thick stone walls. "So hurry up; when you're dried up, we'll put you in with her."

To his surprise Anne didn't react; he had expected to get some reaction out of her.

And then, things got strange.

He had anticipated Bonny to react poorly to being told she'd spend the night, and the foreseeable future, in a cell with an over privileged English brat, with violence, or at least anger. She expressed neither of those emotions, but instead pushed herself forward, rising on her toes and reaching out for him. He had anticipated violence, so when her hands reached for his head, he was protecting other organs.

Nails, surprisingly sharp and biting for how short they were, dug into the side of his face, and at first he thought she was going to claw him, in a most uncharacteristic manner, but instead, he found the surprising taste of her lips crushing against his own. She was latched on like a viper, and Vane had to apply considerable effort to get her to release, first pulling her hands off his face, then gripping her shoulders and pulling her back, holding her at an arm's distance. He gave her a good shake, as if to bring her to her senses, but the only thing it succeeded in doing was knocking her hat to the ground and send water droplets into the fire, creating a snap his.

"The fuck was that about?" he hissed, releasing her with a shake and taking a step back, which incidentally brought him closer to her weapons. He was breathless, and he didn't like the way she had been able to raise his heart beat. Bad enough he was being led around by his cock when it came to Guthrie, the last thing he needed was to fall prey to something like Anne Bonny.

She didn't move, which made him that much more uneasy, causing him to call out again, putting a hand out against the flat of the centre of her chest, larger on her than most women on the island as her chest itself was quite a bit smaller.  "I'm not going to be your revenge fuck," he growled, a warning tone in his voice trying to tell her to stay back.

"Never said you were," she replied, stepping back, the animal in her taking the cues his body was giving out to stay away. She turned her back to him and spread open her coat, letting the heat from the fire at the wet material as it clung to her.

"I'm not stupid," he muttered, trying to put his pulse back to normal. "You're doing this to get back at Jack, to make him jealous. I'm not going to be part of your stupid games."

There was silence behind him as Anne considered what he had said. She hadn't anticipated that type of reaction, though she couldn't very well say he was out right wrong in his assessment either. She let the jacket slip off her shoulders, draping it over a chair to allow the shirt to benefit fully from the dry heat of the fire.

He looked over his shoulder at her as he grabbed one of the omnipresent green bottles and two tin cups, pouring a mouthful of straight rum into each, dropping one on the table closer to her, but keeping the large wooden rectangle and two swords between them for the time being, contemplating that he would almost rather her force him into a sword fight than to face that particular temptation.

When he looked up, the light of the fire place was illuminating the lithe figure he had believed to be living under the over sized men's clothing she wore, the woman holding the soaked muslin out to the sides flat in front of the flame in order to try it faster. She was a woman of immense and indomitable pride, that she had been turned down was going to sit poorly with her, and Vane was okay with that. If anything, her injured pride would work in his favour, getting her out of his hair with considerably more swiftness.

It'd be a selfish man of stone who couldn't feel even the slightest bit for Anne Bonny, if they knew the story. She had Jack had been nearly inseparable since she was a young girl, most would call a child but she hardly acted the part. Already married to a vicious turncoat coward, Anne had put several people into the ground before she found her way to Jack. She had seen Jack as her white knight, as her salvation. He remembered when Rackham first broached the idea of bringing Bonny aboard; the girl was barely fifteen years old, but Jack was adamant that they needed to get her away from her husband or the next time Jack returned to port, he was likely to find Anne dead.

Vane didn't know what that kind of loyalty was like, not then and certainly not now. In some ways, he had thought he had wanted it, but seeing the pain it could cause when it was stripped away, he decided he was better off without it. He had enough pain.

"Drink," he nudged the tin cup with his own, making it scrape along the table. "You're shivering."

To his surprise, she turned and took the cup and took a long sip, draining the amber liquid and feeling the warmth spread through her body with a sigh. "Not going to ask who said not to kill Flint?"

He had wondered, though there he was pretty sure he had heard the Barlow woman's voice and naturally assumed that it had been her, and said as much. "Miranda Barlow, the school teacher from inland Vane thinks he's hiding from everyone," he spoke with conviction, honestly thinking he was right, so much so that the nearly imperceptible shake of Anne's head felt like a kick to the groin.

"Guthrie," she muttered, putting her cup down after inspecting it to ensure it was sufficiently empty.

It hung in the air between them, Anne's eyes challenging him to say something to defend the cunt who would rather save Flint than Vane. She was aware as anyone that Anne was no longer part of Vane's crew, and no longer part of her protection, she would have no way of knowing that there was an understanding between the two of them that existed on a basic, animalistic level.

He set his drink down and came around the table, once more trying to invade her personal space, though this time there was no intention of intimidating her with his size. He was aware it was futile; a person like Anne Bonny was not intimidated just because someone was bigger than them, if that were true, she'd be terrified of a good eighty percent of the island. No, what he was looking for as he met the cold, blank expression of the woman in front of him was any sense that she was playing him, and damn it, he didn't find it.

"You've never played me," he said, stating an open point. While she might have benefitted from his absence, absconded with more than her fair share on certain raids and generally disobeyed all but the most direct and stringent orders, she had the unique position among women on this island of always being honest. Often brutally and disgustingly so.

"Nothin t' gain from it," she said, her tone and manner dry and to the point, as Anne always tended to be. Her too big for her face mouth stretching into a distasteful sneer as she crossed her arms over her chest, not just for warmth, but for the fact that her body was reacting to the chill of the air.

"Seems you're the only one who sees it like that," he commented, leaning over her and setting the tin cup down, his head tilting to the side. "Either makes you stupid, or the only honest pirate out there."

"I'm not stupid," she shot back, too quickly. It was too obvious that she was only too aware that compared to Jack, she was not the brains of their operation. "Just saw no need."

This firey show of temper drew a smirk from Vane, his left hand leaning heavily on the table as the right came up to her chin in a gesture he had done a million times when he was her captain and he was passing information to her. It made her listen, it promised that he would have her full, undivided attention.

"No," he said. "You aren't." He loomed closer, tilting her head at a more severe angle, nearly touching his chest to hers. She had her own scent. Charles had been around enough women to know that each one had their own scents and tastes. When Anne crushed his mouth with her own, she tasted like rum and spiced pork, which was likely what she had grabbed on her way through the kitchen at the tavern.

The main doors had been locked when he came by as well, and without prior knowledge of the tunnels which had ferreted them safely, it was only natural that Bonny entered through the kitchen. He hardly knew her to pass up a bite when no one was looking provided she wasn't actively working to find a solution to some problem or another.

"And why's that?" he growled, adopting the posture of a predator in full by this point, looming over her. His hand moved from her chin along the delicate line of her jaw, the back of his coarsely calloused fingers stroking down the soft skin of her throat. He could feel her pulse quickening under his touch. Good, he thought. Serves her right.

"Why when everyone's looking to squeeze every ounce of profit and benefit out of everyone else are you so... simple, Anne Bonny?" He paused, his thumb cresting over her throat, hand clenching, squeezing just a little, just enough to let her know he was in control again. She tried to turn her face away from his, but he easily redirected her with a correction of his thumb, sliding it up along her jaw and forcing the woman’s face to meet his once more.

She was still watching him, his reflection distorted in the wide pupils set in the almost ice blue of her iris, inquisitive and hard, head tilting to allow her blood to pump easier as his face neared hers. "Why bother with the tricks? Never really been at odds with you," she said, feeling his hand push back into her, his body stepping forward and pushing her back.

"But it's not just me," he said when her body jolted against the cold stone wall, his posture becoming more aggressive, fully invading her personal space at this point. He pressed his hips against hers, pinning the smaller form to the wall with a harsh thrust. "You don't scheme on anyone, Bonny."

She looked up at him, starting to feel herself grow angry. He was passing judgements on her, and while Jack had commented that her lack of scheming as an endearing quality, proof that even while she was an incredible killer, she still had some innocence to her. Vane, on the other hand, was turning it around on her, making it sound like she simply wasn't capable of it. A flush rose to her cheeks and her eyes narrowed sharply, but when she tried to push back, she found Vane an immovable object, solidly blocking her path. A simple push against her neck had her back against the wall.

"The fuck is your point?" she finally growled, her eyes sharp but the tone of her voice sharper.

His head bent, mouth crushing against her mouth, pressing his body against her trapped form, drawing her up as his hand moved from throat to the back of her head, pulling her into him. She was small in his arms, hard and cold from the rain still, where his body was warm, hot almost, and engulfing.

He expected her to struggle, he almost wanted her to at this point, but when her hands finally grabbed on to him, he found her chilled fingers sinking between the leather of his pants and the taught skin at his hips. Ice cold, strong, and pulling him forward, pressing his body into hers with even more fervor.

This too was welcome.


	4. Chapter 4

With her back to the wall, and his chest crushing against her own, Anne forgot about the chill of the wet cloth clinging to her, and the burning hatred for Max, and even the lingering sadness and despondency caused by Jack’s betrayal. All of that was replaced with a fire started deep in her body, burning to the surface in a truly animalistic fashion.

The sharp scent of Vane’s sweat, before an oppressive and mildly repulsive odor, was now driving her wild, creating a hunger for more inside her Anne hadn’t felt for anyone but Jack before. No, not love, but a lust built on something more than a purely physical attraction, she thought to herself. Anne gave in to the heat, her hands pushing him far enough back that she could work the lacing on his pants.

His own hands had slid from her head and neck, holding her slim rib cage, her trim waist and the barely there swell of nearly not there hips. Compared to the other women he had been with, Eleanor and a litany of well-endowed women who traded sex for money, Anne’s body was different. The soft, feminine curves of the blonde woman were nearly completely absent, and yet, he wanted to see more of the lithe form arching, pressing and writhing into him, trapped like a wraith between his body and the wall.

Hands slid further down, over her backside, where the tails of her shirt, which she had untucked when attempting to dry the still soaking garment, hung, covering her backside and the closure to her trousers. He balled the fabric up over her hips, pulling it up to expose her chill skin to the burn of his own. Her hands moved from his body to his wrists and the kiss stopped, a soft, growling “No,” coming from the woman, paired with a sharp, copper taste Vane could neither confirm nor deny the origin of. It was likely either of them could have caused the other to bleed with the viciousness which they had pressed forward in the last embrace.

He paused to consider what was more an order or a demand than a request. It was too late to stop the arousal which had grown between them; he knew as well as she did he wasn’t going to be sending her to Ashe until he had his way, and she had hers as well.  Many things Charles Vane could be accused of, but being compromised and unskilled in anything so closely relating combat, and what else would one call intercourse with Anne Bonny, was not among them.

His hands released her shirt, but remained under it, feeling the tight, pert swell of her ass through the drenched pants and his mouth once more came crashing down upon her unrelenting and hungry lips. Unlike his own, leather garments, Anne’s wool breeches were still soaking wet having absorbed every drop of rain water that came in contact with them. These she didn’t argue with when he moved to remove them. They fell to her knees, pooling at the tops of her boots which, if he was to judge by the wriggling of her hips, she was trying to toe off.

He heard them fall over more than anything, but he felt the cool, clammy touch of Anne’s inner thigh as it came up, wrapping his hip once she was free of her trousers, calf coiling around his thigh and foot curling just inside his knee, pulling his body to her and giving her two free hands. They wrapped his shoulders and in a moment he had her off the ground, feeling the heat of her eager sex against his partially exposed manhood.

No words, merely animal grunts as he balled her shirt up enough to get at her ass, his square, long fingered hand more than large enough to span an entirely cheek with ease. The skin was cool, almost cold, but firm, tightly stretched over her muscles, which flexed as his other hand guided her free leg up to his hip. The heat of her core against his groin contrasted sharply with the chill of her legs around his waist.

With her legs locked at his waist, her hands were free to reach under her and push down the leather, at least far enough to free the rigid piece of flesh that had been teasing her through the leather. She felt one hand leave her backside, tickling along the inside of her thigh and she knew he was positioning himself. The kiss broke and Anne drew a deep, shakey breath as she felt the smoothness of his head split her lips, sliding across her skin, encouraged by her own wetness.

He found her entrance and paused for a moment, her weight balanced between the wall and his hips, pulling back to watch her, wondering what expressions someone as unreadable as Anne Bonny might make when he thrust into her. In deference to her size, he didn’t take her in one deep, quick thrust as he might have with a rented woman, there would be time later, but for now, he pushed firmly but not violently, feeling her walls stretch to accommodate him.

One hand braced her back, the other ran up her neck to the back of her head, fingers twisting tightly with the red strands, tugging lightly as he drove into her, inch by inch, watching her face. She didn’t complain, or declare him to big, but given how tight she was, it wasn’t going to surprise him if she did.

Slowly, she took him, her own hips rolling and setting a rhythm he could keep to for the time being, at least until he had sunken all the way into her for the first time. Their pulses raced, and while not in complete sync, their bodies were working in tandem. Eventually Vane felt her hips press against his, and Anne felt the pressure of being fully penetrated by him, her body tensing, squeezing his, as he hit bottom. She let out a hiss and he captured her mouth once more, knocking her head back against the stone wall her shoulders were being crushed back against.

With his entire length inside her, Vane felt crushed, but pleasurably so. Slowly at first be began to thrust, long, slow and deep, a solid sound of flesh meeting flesh mixed with two distinct tones of grunting. There was no need to be quiet here; the walls were nearly two feet thick in some spots, between stone and mortar and wood and draperies set up to cut down on drafts. He could make her sing the Psalms and not a soul would be any the wiser.

As it was, though, there were no thoughts of deities between the two of them, merely the feral hunger of a force of nature finding an equal. She squeezed her knees and rose up against his body, letting her hair fall as a red curtain around their faces as he held her back steady, leaning back himself to keep balance as they moved off the wall.

Vane found his steps awkward, hindered by the binding of his pants above his knees, not to mention the weight perched upon his shaft, writhing, grinding and riding him even as his attention attempted to go elsewhere. He allowed her to continue, trying to focus on getting them from one side of the room to the other without falling.

Her swords scattered to the ground, clattering without notice to the stone floor in front of the fire, and he set her down on the coarse wood table top. Her skin, softer and less used to the elements than his own, prickled at the touch, but as it had been his desk and dinner table, as well as a place for this act on previous occasions with other women, it had been sufficiently sanded and smoothed as to avoid any uncomfortable splinters. Anne leaned her weight back, the palms of her calloused hands just barely reaching the sides, but able to grip it well enough.

From here, Charles could see her better, a hand working its way up her shirt to latch onto one of her breasts. Small, but round and very perky, it filled the palm of his hand, the hard nub of the nipple rolled between the crux of his first and middle finger. Her face twisted, mouth hanging open just slightly and her eyes pinched shut. No longer able to rely on gravity alone, Vane began to thrust more vigorously, feeling her body respond to his touch, unable to control his own reaction to her responses.

The shirt, however, remained a point of frustration. She seemed fine with him touching her breasts, but he wanted more. He wished to taste her.

He leaned forward, the edge of the table hard but harmlessly dull against his muscular thighs, pressing first a kiss along the soft, white flesh under her ear on her neck, the same place she had marked Flint earlier in the evening, and then with a quick change, his mouth opened and he bit, not hard enough to draw blood but it did cause her body to tighten under him. Her chest thrust against his hand and he could feel the legs tightening on his waist, drawing him deeper into her, and causing her walls to contract.

A soft sound came from her mouth as he bit down, Anne feeling the fire move through her body once more, as if the pressure building in her core was insufficient to the cause. Repositioning her hands to rest her weight on the left, the right came to the back of Vane’s head, twisting in the tangles of dark, sea salt ravaged hair, digging down to the scalp as the mouth suckled where it had bit.

Feeling her tense, he thrust harder, deeper into her, knowing what was about to happen, free hand pulling her to him at the small of her back.

She hissed his name, the only word either had managed since this started in earnest, hand twisting tighter in his hair, tugging at his scalp as her hips arched into his, defying him to attempt to move away. Her body felt on fire, a heavenly, tingling sensation not quite the same as what she had experienced before. Not quite fucking and certainly not making love, it was sex for the sake of sex and the orgasm that ripped shatteringly through Anne’s body as Vane drove deep in her made her knees weak in a way she hadn’t experienced in some time.

Eyes screwing tightly shut, she hissed again, her body relaxing only to tense once more as another wave of pleasure lit through her, warming her skin and bringing a flush to her face, and while Charles was unable to see the look on her face, he could feel the rigidity in her form as she pushed against him.

The grip of her walls along his length made Charles shudder, a low growling groan into the curvature of the milk white neck of the woman on the table, but he endured the spasmodic waves as they washed over her, slowly daring to move once more. As the flood of her pleasure ebbed he was granted greater movement, provided he was slow. 

His mouth released her, a small, curved welt forming along where his bottom teeth had forced up against her flesh, but he didn’t think it’d be noticeable in a few hours. She tasted sweet, a salt of sweat that was to be expected but also of something else, something Vane couldn’t quite put his finger on.

The trail his mouth cut along her skin left Anne feeling raw, prickled, and it wasn’t long until he was at the flat of her breast bone, unable to proceed, impeded by the buttons of her blouse, until one by one, he opened them, slowly. As he bent, he lost the angle and his shaft slid from her. No matter, he thought, there’d be more time later.

In her post climax daze, or perhaps just emboldened by the flush of endorphins which fogged her mind, she didn’t protest as he undid the last button, kissing just above the short trimmed tuft of dark hair between her legs. He dared to look up at her, and found that her eyes had opened and she was watching him, a dreamy glaze over the normally penetrative stare. She looked almost… feminine.

He slid back up her body, his left hand cupping her right breast as his mouth tended to the other, latching on to the nipple. First he bit lightly, bringing the pink nub to full attention, before he opened wider, engulfing more than simply that tiny pink bud but also the areola around it in his mouth. She moaned, and it enticed him further. Her breasts had that same, unnameable taste her throat had, and as he enjoyed it once more, Vane growled deep in his throat.

His strong hands gripped her hips and pulled them towards him, sliding her from the edge of the table to stand in front of it, placed tightly between him and the piece of, relatively, solid furniture. Those big, blue eyes, silent and wanting, looked up at him, and for the life of him he couldn’t remember anything else as he bent over her, claiming her mouth one more time, this kiss just as passionate though less angry than the ones that proceeded it. Her lips parted and the soft, somewhat sweet muscle of her tongue invaded his mouth, swirling and struggling against his own. When they broke, he clawed back some of her hair, bringing it out of her face where so often it resided.

There was a pregnant pause between the two of the, which had so often been shared in the light of day or the dark of night prior to an execution order was given. He tipped her chin up and his head tilted to the side, seeming to appraise her one more time before he turned her around and put a hand between her shoulder blades, encouraging her to bend at the waist and rest her weight against the table.

Anne complied, her back arcing into it. The cotton shirt was nearly dry by this point, but she still had no desire to take it off, or to have him remove it and see what lay underneath.  Instead, he simply flipped the tails up over her back, exposing the creamy flesh of her backside. She felt the rough, warm and appraising touch as his palms pressed deeply against her, a long, slow, solid squeeze. His thumbs pulled along the crease of her backside and she could feel the air, chill against her soaked and tender skin.

Once more the smooth, hard head of his shaft slid against her sex, parting her lips before sliding in completely; there was no need to work his manhood in at this point. Her folds wrapped around him, that familiar and pleasant squeeze as he buried himself fully in her, as well as the satisfying feeling of her round arse against his body.

Vane growled, about to reach up under her shirt, only to find his hand swatted away and then commandeered by Anne. He paid no heed and held her hip then with the free hand, the one she had redirected found her breast once more and continued where it had left off previously.

There was something about the intensity of taking a woman from behind; it felt more… spontaneous, was that the word? Again, not something he put all too much thought into, instead he kept pushing into her, the table rocking as he picked up more strength and speed, spurred on by the whimper that rose from the redhead beneath him. When she had climaxed the first time she had squeezed so tight Vane had thought she might push him out of her completely, he was wondering what response this angle might elicit.

The wet sounds of their passion being spent, anger being let free and forgiveness for those who had wronged them found in kind went no further than the thick, stone walls, and even if they had, the deafening drone of the storm still raging outside the fortress would drown them out. As her whimpers became louder, more desperate groans, still heavily flavoured with lust, he pushed harder. Her hip bones would be bruised from the table in the morning, but for now she didn’t thing about it as her knees shook and she felt a second wave begin to rush upon her.

He could sense it too, the quiver which ran through her body, the tightening of her walls around him and the slight change in her voice as she moaned. Charles’ hand left her chest and moved to her throat, arching her back more severely, gripping her neck strongly enough to make her pulse dull but not so much as to make the mysterious Anne Bonny react poorly. Not even Jack knew her full history, he was certain of that much, and there was as much darkness beyond her years as a pirate as the rest of them.

Drawing her body against his, he continued to thrust, grunting into her ear as he did, pushing with powerful hips as deep into her as the angle would allow. She pushed into him, wanting to feel more of his length inside her and he offered an encouraging growl, her name rolling as seductively off his tongue and past his lips as his own had when she came.

 “Don’t stop,” she groaned, feeling his pace weaken a bit as his seed emptied deep inside her. She folded slightly at the waist in order to give herself an easier time in pulling her own climax from his cock. “Don’t…”

“Christ!” her voice was cut off by the primal roar as he plunge deep into her, forcing her body forward against the table, her legs once again trapped between his body and the wood. She didn’t mind the pain, or the impact, if anything, the strength at which he drove home into her was a sign of how strong his enjoyment was.

The shuddering groan followed and she felt an immense heat rush through her body once again. Anne knew where the heat came from, and she was well aware that her own pleasure was just at the brink. She reached back and gripped the tight muscles of his hip with one hand, her stubby nails digging into the pale skin barely, rarely exposed to the ravages of the sun which had turned the rest of Vane into something akin to a Roman bronze statue of some sort of masculine monster. The purpose was to keep him inside as it happened.

The heat spread from her core, through her body, until everything sang with a bright, electric tingle, flushing her face and making her nipples all but ache. She writhed and screamed his name, a loud roar a kin to his own earlier cry, and were there anyone directly outside the room there would be no doubt what was actually going on behind the heavy wooden door, though they would have to be right there and she guessed little had changed as far as Vane’s reign style and most would be wise enough to not linger outside the Captain’s quarters unless they had a good reason.


	5. Chapter 5

Both bodies locked together as their combined pleasure continued to trigger small spasms, resulting in the other twitching, thus rekindling the spasms, for what seemed like an endless cycle. Vane slumped forward, roughly pushing a handful of Anne’s hair up off her neck and offering first a bite, then a rough kiss to the sweat prickled skin he found there. Anne merely let out a soft sound, turning her head to the side and giving him better access to his chosen piece of skin, eyes drowsily half closed.

When he straightened himself back up, her pulled her with him, smoothing a hand down her bare front, rubbing the top of her thigh as he waited for the somewhat disappointing feel of her rough shirt against his chest. Instead he was greeted with the soft, warm, living touch which could only belong to skin. In her post climax glow, Anne’s skin was flushed all over and warm to Vane’s touch, but shadowed from his eyes by the light of the fire which she stood in front of. Her shirt was pooled around her elbows, falling over her hands and giving her a rather ethereal look as she sigh to his touch.

A strong fingered hand drew down along her spine, and that’s when he felt them.

Long, flat, smooth and jagged, and no matter where he moved his hands he could feel them. Scars. They created a lattice work of bad memories across her back, though none seemed any newer than the next, which is to say they were all very old. In his time knowing Anne, which at this point was nearly five years, he had never known her to have been put to the lash. He certainly hadn’t had any reason to do it, and he couldn’t very well see Rackham standing for their last captain to do so either.

Anne froze, realising that something in his touch had changed, and looking down to see the dark fabric, black in the dim light provided by the fire place, around her wrists rather than her shoulders. She had known better than to let him take her shirt, but her breasts had ached so badly for his touch she had given into having it unbuttoned and now, in their positioning and repositioning, it had fallen off. She went stiff, cold under the continued stroking. It didn’t take him long to feel it either.

“S’why you didn’t want me to take your shirt off, isn’t it?” he asked, finally reaching the crest of her backside, hooking two thick fingers from each hand into the collar of her shirt and drawing it up over her. If he was to be entirely honest, Vane would admit that not only were those lashes worse than the ones on his back, or Jacks, but that he couldn’t remember the last time he saw someone with so many scars on such a small patch of skin.

She didn’t respond but wrapped the shirt around her when he brought it to her shoulders, hands brushing his in a more typical manner. A cold eye caught the light of the fire as it watched him.

“Wouldn’t have stopped what happened,” he told her, suddenly feeling an uninvited surge of anger as the math clicked in, and a desire to assure her. He didn’t need her, no he could have gotten some form of satisfaction from any number of women on the island, but he had wanted it to be her for reasons both good, bad and in between, no doubt very much the same as why she came to him, though it’d be hard to imagine given her predilection to murdering fellow crewman just who would take Anne Bonny to bed without turning it into something ugly.

The math clicked in her head; she had been with Jack for 8 years, since she was 13 years old. The scars, if in fact they predated Jack, had been inflicted upon a child.

As he was lost in his thoughts, Anne reached for her pants from the floor, moving to get dressed and, as she had agreed to, go to Abigail Ashe’s cell, serving both as sentry and prisoner herself, when Vane’s hand reached out and too her left wrist, large thumb sliding down over the gold band which symbolised the promise she had made to her first husband. She wore another ring for Jack, taken from a prize and hidden in secret for some time before he finally gave it to her, but it was too large for her hands and she often kept it round her neck, though it was in a safe at the brothel right now, Anne having left it not wanting anything to do with Jack following her here.

“It was him, wasn’t it?” he asked, referring to James Bonny.

Her eyes met his, the unreadable expression once more across her face, though her cheeks retained a slight glow to them. “Yes.” Rarely had anyone heard Anne use such a cold tone, and even by her standard the word was harsh and clipped, though unbeknownst to Vane it was just as likely she was choking on the hate as she was on the fear which he still held over her. Even after all these years, the thousands of miles between them, Anne still feared her true, legal husband. She did not fear James Flint, nor Charles Vane, nor Eleanor Guthrie or even the Navy of King James himself, but she feared her first husband as a sinner fears the fires of hell.

He tugged her back against him, an easy gesture for she came willingly, and wrapped an arm around her thin shoulders, the other around her waist, bending his head over her, basically engulfing her in his form. He wasn’t the kind to offer sweet platitudes, nor would he dare to offer protection to her; it was her fight and she was more than capable of it in his eyes. Of everyone on the island, perhaps he was the most capable of understanding the catharsis that comes from slaying your demons.

“Your coat’s not dry yet,” he whispered, keeping his voice to a low, conspiratorial level. “Go set down and I’ll take you to Ashe’s cell tomorrow. I’m readying a boat to take her to Carolina and ransom her to her father, the governor there. I need you to guard her on the journey.” He tipped her chin up as he had a million times before when he was her captain and she his secret weapon. “You can do that.” Not a question; a statement.

She nodded, her heart racing though she wouldn’t let him know. Carolina… It may not have brought up such memories if he hadn’t just broached the topic of James, but he had, and now, without knowledge, Charles Vane was bringing her right to him.


	6. Chapter 6

                Anne didn't come back to the inn that night, and while Jack was worried, it wasn't until the storm began to rage in earnest, driving customers and whores out of the court yard and into their private rooms.

                Jack sat in his room, in their room, alone, watching as the remaining clouds from last night's storm began to dissipate, leaving the sky streaked with purple as the sun lit it a beautiful orange. He had waited up all night for her to return, and yet... She hadn't. It didn't bode well that he couldn't find her anywhere, and he had looked. When the storm began to lift enough to venture out he had checked the tavern, but it was in fact closed.

                The sun would be rising about now; Anne should be back, he thought. And still no sign of the woman he loved.

                The truth is he felt bad, he felt worse than bad. With all of the words ever spouted from Jack Rackham's silver tongue, he was at a loss for what to say about what he had just done. Anne had stood by him when he was the outcast from Vane's crew, and it was in no small part his and Max's fault that Anne had gone to such extremes, killing Hammond and his ilk, in the first place.

                Another sigh and he rubbed his hands over his face, stretching his eyes to the side before running his fingers through the cropped, brown hair. This had been the first time he had ever taken a side that didn't squarely sit with Anne.

                The hour glass figure of Max, former whore and current Madam of the Inn, filled the door, a pitcher of ale in one hand and a small tray with sweets and delights in the other. Unlike many places on the island, the Inn typically stocked a wider assortment of pastries and treats in order to better spoil their guests.

                "I take it she has not come back yet?" the sultry voice of the exotic woman chimed, her hip thrust to one side as she set the tray down and moved to the broad bed which the three of them on one occasion or another, had shared.

                "No," Jack spoke in a quick tone which belied his frustration. This was the first time Anne had failed to come home... Well, other than when she had spent the night with Max. He sighed and felt the bed shift, Max had crawled onto it behind him and was laying a hand on his shoulder.

                "She will come to her senses," Max assured him in a velvet smooth voice, her head rotating to let her breath softly brush against his skin. Her hands spread along his back to his shoulders, squeezing the caps. "She is mad. She will calm down."

                "Oh, I wish I had your faith," Rackham said with a heavy sigh, standing up and pushing away Max's advances. He would have to admit that she was more than part of the problem with what was going on between him and Anne. "I've never made a choice that did not directly involve her since she was thirteen..." He paused, watching the woman as she sat, attempting to be seductive on the bed. "You know, perhaps it is best for both of us if you are not in our bed when she comes back."

                Her large, expressive eyes narrowed and Max seemed to solidify herself upon the bed. "Of the two of us, I am the one who has been known to soothe the beasts and demons within her. If anything, it should be you who leaves," she challenged, and even before she was finished speaking Jack was shaking his head.

                "No, as I said before: you are just a phase, a passing fancy. Anne and I have something you shall never have with her, or with me," he asserted.

                "I was not the one who betrayed her," Max smirked, her head cocking to the side as she was sure she had a legitimate point against Jack's defense.

                "Ah, no, but you are the person standing between her and sailing once again, so there is that to consider," he said with a characteristic smirk, holding up the ringed index finger on his right hand to make a point. "And do not doubt for a moment that she would kill you, my dear woman; Anne has... a history which is considerably darker than her recent past."

                Max eyed him skeptically, her large, almond shaped eyes narrowing. She had thought she understood the relationship between Anne and Jack, but it was coming out that things were far deeper and more complex than Max had imagined. It wasn't the simple case that Max had thought it was, that Anne was turned off by the fact that Jack had virtually lost his manhood when he lost his place as Quarter Master on the Ranger. 

                "You worry for me, mon cher?" she asked, pushing herself off the bed and sauntering towards him, her dress floating around her curves like an ethereal shape. "But I am not afraid of her," Max cooed softly, showing that even in her "retired" state she was still highly seductive. Dark eyes seemed to focus on his hand but it didn't mean she wasn't watching and waiting for his reaction. Her hand slid into his, her fingers unfurling against his palm and laced with him. "I have soothed her  spirit once; I can do it again." As she spoke, Max's body pushed in closer and her full lips brushed Jack's, her chest just barely brushing his.

                The reaction she received was not quite what she expected, in fact it was far and away the last thing she expected. His body went rigid and then he forced her back, his dark eyes glaring at her in a skeptical way. "Oh, I am quite thoroughly aware of your skills, my dear, and that is why I'm going to have demand that you, in fact, are not here when Anne gets back. Not in at the Inn and certainly not in her room." Jack took a hold of the confused looking woman's shoulders and pushed her back to arm's length. "I will go speak with Miss Guthrie and see if I can find room for you with her."

                She was about to protest but Jack was already gone. Max set her mouth into a thin, straight line and narrowed her eyes; this woman was far more complicated than she had first anticipated. It would indeed be very difficult to play this one. Unlike Eleanor, who at her core wanted someone to love her unconditionally, Anne wanted... what? She had Jack's unconditional devotion, or at least from Max's perspective she did. It took a strong man to walk away from Max.


	7. Chapter 7

When Anne met James Bonny, she was Anne Cormac, the daughter of a solicitor and plantation owner who was run out of Ireland when he slept with the servant girl and refused to get rid of her or the resulting child, Anne. She was twelve, with a temper that most Irish redheads were known for and a huge dowry, and sole inheritor to her father’s estate, James was in his early twenties, a small time pirate who never really had any skill or bravery to speak of, and just as charming as Jack Rackham but with only half the morals.

Bonny seduced Anne, stealing her away from her father’s plantation and her fiancée, the rapacious son of a local government official who had already taken Anne’s maidenhead and suffered dearly at her hands, and likely the hands of the two fathers, for his crime. The marriage between Anne and the boy, aged only seventeen, was to be held off until Anne reached the appropriate age of sixteen and the boy would be old enough to hold property in his own name at which point they would be given a portion of Cormac’s plantation, the boy would follow his father’s footsteps in the government and they would live unhappily ever after.

Bonny offered Anne more than the stifling life of a plantation housewife.

"We'll sail the seven seas and be absolutely the most fearsome pirates that ever dared to do so!" he would say, but Anne was still hesitant.

"But my father... He'll find me," she had replied. On this occasion they were meeting in the stables, where the white stable hands had been dismissed for the nights and only the slave charged with being their assistant remained. For extra rations and a bottle of rum he would keep his mouth shut until Cormac came up with a better deal.

"What if we killed him?"

The sound of a door thunk-ing shut and wood scraping along the stone floor woke Anne up with a start and she pushed herself up on her hands and into a sitting position, groping for the dirk she normally kept under her pillow. It took a few moments for her to register that she was not in fact in her own room, or even alone.

The stone walls were strange, jagged and unforgiving. Through narrow casements cut high up on the wall strangled sun light and fresh air crept in, defusing some of the smoke from last night's fire and letting in enough light for Anne to see without a torch.

It was coming back to her; she was in the fort and Vane was here, or around somewhere. He had a plan to use her as a private guard for Peter Ashe's daughter, Abigail, as the new _Ranger_ crew set sail for Carolina. It seemed all well and good, in theory, except the idea of going back to Carolina set ice water into Anne's veins.

Her legs were stiff from the previous night, not just the actions which left dark bruises she could see just under the hem of her loose fitting blouse, but from laying curled up on Vane's pile of pillows and blankets. Why the man never adopted using a hammock or a sleeping palette the way normal pirates did, or an actual bed as Jack preferred, Anne would never know.

She pushed herself up to her feet and rebuttoned her blouse, reaching for her pants which had been picked up off the floor and set near the now dead fire, along with her coat, boots and hat. Her sabres sat on the table. She slipped back into her britches and tied her belt, slipping the blades into her belt. She was just slipping her coat on and picking up her hat, setting it on her head with a typical angle as the door behind her opened with Vane and one of his men.

She turned, eyeing both of them silently, skeptically. She didn't recognise the second man, must be Vane's new quarter master.

"Johnson, this is Anne Bonny," he gestured towards the woman as she narrowed her eyes, turning to face him. "Bonny, this is Johnson, _Ranger_ 's new quarter master."

The two met eye to eye, even as Johnson was several inches taller than her, and almost a foot thicker through the chest and shoulders. He had one good eye, the other was covered with a patch, probably had an empty hole underneath it.

"She doesn't look so tough," he growled, eyeing Anne up in a very lewd manner, making her thankful that she had never seen him around the brothel.

"Don't let her size fool you," Vane said, producing an apple and taking an overzealous bite out of it. "She'll be more than enough to keep the men off Ashe's daughter until we get to Carolina." He chewed and swallowed, smirking at Anne and then Johnson. "Enough men remember her from the old crew, they'll behave."

"And Albinus' men?" he asked, the pair speaking about Bony as if she wasn't even there. She was used to it, though. He and Jack used to do the same thing, and it hadn't bothered her then, and wasn't likely to start now.

"They'll learn fast enough," Anne ventured into the conversation. "When do we leave?"

There was a semi stunned silence from Vane's second in command as he eyed Bonny, narrowing his sharp gaze at her as if to try and intimidate her. When he tried to challenge her, she simply turned her head in the opposite direction and let him peek at the sneer and glare under the wide brim of her hat. The standoff gave way when Vane's man stepped down, muttering something under his breath that made Anne hiss through her teeth at him.

"Now."

Fair enough. Anne shrugged and nodded, following the two men to the cell where Ashe's daughter was being held. It was as spacious as Vane's own quarters, which lead her to believe that it was originally designed to hold many prisoner's.

When the door opened, the frail and filthy looking form of Abigail Ashe cowered in the corner, a leg iron holding her in place. Anne's nose wrinkled and she turned her head, hiding the lower half of her face in her sleeve. "Aw, fuck, she stinks," she hissed, never one to keep her thoughts to herself when it came to certain things. "You can't give her back like that."

The two men looked at Bonny then at each other.

It was Johnson who spoke first. "I think she has a point, Captain," he said, looking over Ashe's form, a wary, scared eye looking out from ragged, sweat and filth coated hair. "We know she's Abigail Ashe, but who's to say if her father would even recognise her in this state? And, if we're being honest, she does kind of smell."

Vane looked from Anne to Johnson and back again. "Get hot water sent down, send someone to find a dress," he turned away and Johnson and Vane began to leave. "You stay here." He ordered Anne and she nodded, turning to look at the girl cowering in the corner.

The door slammed shut with a final thud, the coda of the lock clicking back in place and the key withdrawing signalling that indeed she was now locked in with a symbol of everything she had left behind when she married James Bonny nine years ago.

She eyed the woman, her head tilting to the side. On a tin plate about three feet from her was a crust of bred and a small, tin cup, probably filled with water. Anne crouched over the plate and broke off a crust of bread, taking a bite of it as the woman finally looked out from under her arm, dropping it and pulling back the curtain of dark hair. She was young, perhaps 17 years old, and clearly out of her element. "I ain't gonna hurt you," she assured the woman, holding out the crust of bread she had taken a bit of.

The silence stretched on between them as Anne continued to hold out the piece of bread. When her legs started to burn and still the woman hadn't move Anne shrugged. "Fine," and stood up again, stretching her legs and taking another bite of the stale loaf. It certainly wasn't as good as she would have likely been able to scrounge from Vane's quarters, but it wasn't the worst thing she had ever eaten either.

She watched the girl as she ate and leaned her shoulder against the wall. Anne was fine with the idea that the girl wasn't going to be too talkative; she hadn't liked the aristocrats in the colonies when she was part of their world and she wasn't any more fond of them now.

A tub filled with hot water and soap was brought in, along with a towel and a new dress. "Captain wants her ready to go in as soon as possible," Johnson said as he met Anne's steely gaze, still not entirely sure of the woman. She just nodded and watched him leave.

She took off the ankle chain and gestured towards the copper tub with a jerk of her head. "Get in now," she said, her speech typically clipped and short as she stood up and watched the young girl. The girl remained there, starring at Anne blankly for a moment. "What is it? Don't tell me..." Anne rolled her eyes, her lips pinching together. "For fuck's sake!" she hissed through her teeth. "You never bathed yourself, have ya?" she hissed, remembering what life could be like for someone so pampered and sheltered.

The young girl looked up at Anne and despite the fact that they weren't all that far apart in age, their maturity and life experience made them as much strangers to each other's world's as if they had been born in different centuries. Abigail looked simply... stunned, if not innocent. "Well, first step is t' get on your feet then," Anne said tersely, her arms still crossed over her small chest, wanting nothing to do with Ashe in her filth covered state.

The girl got off the ground and undressed herself, eyeing Anne skeptically. "I ain't gon' touch ya," she said, her voice aggressive and angry at the audacity of the girl to assume such things. "In the tub," she ordered next and handed her the soap. "Scrub yourself and your hair. When you think you're clean, do it again."

The girl looked at her rather indignant. "Aren't you going to help me?"

"Not my job," Anne said, leaning against the wall, facing the door and her back to Abigail partially to give the girl privacy, partially because she didn't want the girl thinking that Anne saw her as any more than a moderately annoying charge.

She could hear the woman scrubbing herself as she chewed the inside of her lip, trying not to think of where they were going.  She hadn't thought about Carolina in years, and wasn't keen on going back but it was looking like this was the only chance she would have to get back under the mast, at least for the time being, and she wasn't about to give that up. Besides, she'd be able to get away from Jack and Max, so long as Vane didn't expect her to set foot on in the colony proper, she might be alright.


	8. Chapter 8

                “Anna, my love,” the sweet, just pubescent voice of a young boy with a head of thick, curly dark hair called, looming over Anne’s prone form as he thrust violently into her. This was the first time she had ever been with a man, though Jonathan was more a boy than a man, at only sixteen years old. He was the inheritor of a large plantation close to Anne’s father’s land, and with the two being only children it would be a huge amassing of land when the two finally wed as their fathers had desired.

                Much like now, as the boy forced her down on the stairs of the servant’s stairwell of Anne’s house, where they had gone to get a little bit of privacy. It had all been in the innocent name of “getting to know each other” better, but while Anne had thought they would talk about books, and perhaps if he was brave politics, instead he seemed more interested in learning about what laid beneath the expensive silk of her frock.

They had started innocently enough, holding hands, Jonathan lavishing kisses upon first her knuckles and wrists, then up her bare arms to her thin neck and to her ear where he whispered endearments. Anne was not used to such adoration, her father, while indulgent, was a strict Catholic, practicing in secret, as was Anne, and as such, open displays of affection, even behind closed doors, were a boundary not to be crossed, especially between father and daughter, and with her virtue so indeed of protecting Anne had never before been allowed to be alone with a boy, so this was all new.

It was not so new to Jonathan, who worked his way up her skirts, stroking along her entrance with his thumb and finding the small numb of her clitoris.

“No,” Anne whispered, trying to push him away, but she was always such a small girl, more her mother’s daughter than her father’s, lacking William Cormac’s large height and impressive build. “Jonathan, we can’t! We aren’t married!” she protested, trying in vain to keep her legs together, or remove him without causing injury to either his body or his pride.

“Exactly, Anna,” he said, kissing her on the lips this time. His breath tasted faintly of brandy and Anne wondered if perhaps he was drunk. “If we are to be married, then what is the sin?” he urged, the lust and desire in his voice telling her it was an entirely rhetorical question; he neither expected nor wanted an answer. “You’re going to have to do it eventually, why should our wedding night remind you of the pain? I hear for women it can be quite painful on the first time.”

For one, Anne thought, their wedding wasn’t supposed to take place for at least a year yet, until their fathers had managed to hammer out a binding contract which would ensure William Cormac was not left high and dry, landless and penniless, should Anne die in the child bed or have some other horrible accent take her life before her father passed on.

 “Don’t want to buy the cow before you taste the milk, my father says,” the young boy said, trying his best to be endearing even as he forced himself upon her. He kissed her lips deeply, trying his best to be passionate and sweet, seemingly entirely detached from the fact that Anne was not a willing accomplice in this endeavour. “Here it comes, my dear,” he said, as if he was watching a train.

He hadn’t been wrong in warning Anne the first time would hurt, for even as young as Jonathan was, when he pushed his length inside her it felt like she was being split in two. Later she would find blood stains on the inside of her legs and her shift and the first few layers of fabric of her petticoat, but she had no way of knowing the damage Jonathan was doing now.

For all his talk, he didn’t last very long, and after a few uncomfortable minutes of thrusting and grunting, he spat his seed into her womb and extracted himself. It was then that he noticed a servant girl on the stairs. She wasn’t one of the black slaves, but rather one of the poor Irish Cormac had transported here to live as indentured servants. It was a distinction more important between the servants and slaves than the ruling class, but Anne knew well enough the difference: Slaves were afraid to speak when they saw something like this going on, servants would tattle in hopes of earning favour.

The girl, who Anne knew as Mary, turned and fled up the stairs back from where she came, and Jonathan finished tucking his shirt tails back into his breeches. “You should take care of her, make sure she doesn’t tell anyone,” he said, rather cold and callously.

“What does it matter?” Anne spoke, her naivety clear and evident in her voice. “If we’re supposed to be married, you said it yourself, where is the sin?”

“Don’t be stupid,” he shook his head. “Just do whatever you have to do to make sure she doesn’t tell anyone.”

And with that, he kissed her on the forehead and headed down the stairs, leaving Anne, still bleeding and in considerable abdominal pain, alone in the dark stairwell.

 

Anne was lost in her own thoughts when Abigail called, breaking thoughts of cotton and tobacco and plantations. “Hm?”

“I’ve finished,” the girl repeated. At least captivity hadn’t done much to temper the sense of entitlement, Anne thought to herself.

Holding the towel between her hands she helped the girl out of the tub and allowed her to dry herself off before assisting her in getting dressed, something that, admittedly, a task which would have been more difficult had Abigail been left to her own to accomplish. Current fashion seemed directed entirely at making women’s lives uncomfortable, Anne noted, once again thankful for the comfortable, if not masculine, clothing that she wore without regard.

“You’re pulling too tight!” the girl protested, her body jerking as Anne tucked on the laces at the back of her bodies. “I can barely breathe!”

Anne kept her mouth shut, but suddenly wasn’t thinking that was such a bad thing. She loosened the ties slightly and heard the girl sigh thankfully.

“How do you know how to do this correctly?” the entitled young woman, clearly not fearing much reprisal from Anne who had been rude but not violent with her, asked, her wet, dark head turning over her shoulder to look at Anne’s face, finding it hidden under the brim of her hat.

Anne grunted in reply, tying the laces into a neat and sturdy knot as opposed to the traditional, beautiful bows.

A heavy knock at the door preceeded the sounds of the lock being turned and the door opened to reveal Johnson with another sailor and a set of irons.

“The Captain wants to sail shortly, we should get to the boats,” the one eyed man said, stepping to Abigail and Anne, clamping the irons one to each of their wrists.

“What’s this about then?” Anne asked with a curl of her lip, a sinister sneer which was usually a precursor to violence.

“Captain thinks it’ll be safest for the pair of you if you’re kept together at all times,” he said, meeting Anne’s eyes for only a moment before he looked away, not wanting to hold the dead fish gaze of her pale eyes.

“Does he then,” she muttered under her breath. She wasn’t entirely surprised, but then again, it was hard to surprise her these days. Things she had thought were tried and true, solid as the ground beneath her feet truths were turning out to be more like sand ready to wash away beneath her feet when she really needed it, so why shouldn’t she be shackled to a snivelling brat?

“Come on then,” Johnson said, grabbing the space between the two women’s hands to get them moving.

Anne roughly jerked her hand away from Johnson which tugged the girl into her. She grunted and pushed the girl to her feet and followed the two men. It appeared not everyone was going to be lucky enough to get away from the fort; Charles was leaving about a third of his crew behind to man the fort in hopes that he’d … what? Flint had a fucking Spanish Galleon on the bay and there wasn’t a damned thing Vane could do about any of it. He had tried to kill Flint, luckily happening on him during a trip ashore, but that didn’t work out too good for him.

The two women were escorted out one of the lesser used tunnels, Anne wasn’t sure but she thought for a moment it could have been the same one that they had used to get into the fort, but given the rain from last night it was hardly possible to tell.

When they passed through the portal, Anne could see the angry red of the sun rising on the eastern horizon, streaking the sky a deep orange, the clouds remaining from last night’s storm hanging in a somber, purple mass off in the distance. Abigail’s reaction to the sun was a bit more extreme, which made Anne wonder just how long Vane had kept the girl locked up, never mind how she was going to react to the full sun while out to sea. It was common practice for women to remain below decks when on rare instances they were given to sea travel, but Anne had no intention of standing on convention. She had never done so before, why start now?

“Will it be a long journey?” Abigail’s somewhat weak, dry voice chimed from beside Anne, but it was the second crewman who answered her.

“A few days,” his gruff voice said. “An’ if’n yer dad pays up right and fast, we’ll be back ‘ere before anyone even knows we’ve left.”

Anne pursed her lips and threw a side eyed glance at Johnson. The one eyed sailor had clearly seen his share of action and was thinking the very same thing Anne was: Best not to tempt fate.


	9. Chapter 9

                The bombardment of the fort picked up once again at sunrise, the crew of the _Walrus_ making great use of their much bigger ship, continuing to punish the fortress, praying that the call would come to make land fall sooner rather than later. With each cannon ball loosed the crew knew that was one less armament to be used against the Spanish or English Navies should they come to Nassau, and no man, not even James Flint, wanted to be the man who left Nassau unprotected against the two most powerful navies in the world.

                Flint himself was already on the mainland, along with John Silver. Silver and Flint were a tense alliance, but so long as it was mutually beneficial, and Flint knew Silver didn’t have any better offers, things would be fine. While Flint had been in the tavern, originally dragged there by Miranda and then attacked by Vane, though he never for an instant thought that Miranda had anything to do with that, even Eleanor, if she had been speaking to Barlow, wouldn’t have been that reckless, Silver had been doing his own information gathering.

                The sailor had developed a relationship with Max, one of the prostitutes, now the Madam, at the Inn, and had kept the relationship on that personal/professional lien better than most could dream of. They had schemed to sell Vane and the _Ranger_ the schedule which eventually saw Flint find the _Urke_ , and even after, it had partially because of the good graces Max had with Eleanor Guthrie that had placed Silver in a position to barter with Flint in the first place.

                They were to met at the tavern, bowed over a pint as the sun began to set. When night fell the guns would reign silent, as per Flint`s standing orders, and they would wait. If there was a large fire in the place on the beach traditionally occupied by the sailors from the Walrus, it was a sign to come ashore; it was time to storm the castle. No fire in that spot meant prepare the guns and men for another day of bombardment.

                Silver bounded up the stairs two at a time, a thin sheen of sweat on his dark brow, but otherwise entirely composed and charming as ever, taking up the seat across from Flint and helping himself to a cup of ale from the pitcher set between them.

                “What’ve you got for me?” Flint asked, in no mood to worry about manners. Every day they held off on attacking the fort from the ground was another day of damage done and another week they would be set back on rebuilding the damned thing. Bad enough he had to fire on it as it was, but try as he might he couldn’t convince Eleanor to remove Vane from his position of power.

                “Well, it appears that Jack Rackham is a Captain now,” he said, taking a sip of his beverage without concern for the glare which shot across the table from Flint at him. His dark eyes looked over the edge of the cup and saw the steel gaze of the captain and knew that it wasn’t the kind of information that the man was looking for. “Trust me, that’s important, because it seems that in order to sail again, he had to leave Anne Bonny on the shore.”

                Okay, now that was interesting, Flint would give him that, but it wasn’t exactly gossip regarding the marital life of two of his competitors which Flint had sent Silver out for. “What does this have to do with Vane, the fort or anything?” he growled, his tone low and threatening like a cornered animal.

                “Well, it’s like this,” he said, putting a finger up to signify he need another moment for another mouthful of ale. “Anne ran off when he told her she would be staying behind, and best we can tell, she ended up back with Vane and his crew.”

                “Great, just what we need,” Flint shook his head, his mouth pulling into a tight line at the idea of Vane getting Bonny back on his side; as a wild card she was dangerous enough, the crew killer, they called her, but aligned with Vane? And backed with his name? Oh, she could cause all kinds of damage.

                “But there’s more,” Silver said as Flint immediately wished he had a spy less inclined to the dramatics than Silver was proving to be. “It seems someone spotted Vane’s new quarter master, a Scot by the name of Johnson, along with another man and two women, one who very much fits our Miss Bonny’s description, heading towards the north coast, where I know two things for a fact. One, another source informed me that there is a small boat waiting on the north short and two, our ship is simply too far away and at too poor an angle to see said boat leave.” Silver smiled his Cheshire grin, looking very proud of the information he had managed to barter for. Of course, he had been forced to pay Max in kind, and in cash, for the information she had given him, but the look of on Flint’s face told him that it was worth every shilling.

                “Two women?” He was getting ready to transport Ashe’s daughter. Shit, he thought, he didn’t have much time. Flint blew a sigh out of his nostrils and turned his eyes to Silver. “We have to bring the men on land, get them into the Fort and make sure Vane is gone, then we need to go after him.”

                “But what about the gold?” Silver’s voice had the nuance of a man who was expecting to be played, sure in the fact that flint was simply joking. He wasn’t going to blow off the chance at the _Urke de Lima_ for some girl… was he?

                “Getting rid of Vane is worth all of the gold in the world,” Flint argued, his lip curling distastefully at the taste of Vane’s name on his tongue. Flint was hiding something from Silver, and the other man knew it, and naturally it didn't sit quite well with him.

                "Listen, when we first agreed to enter this venture together, you promised that you would be straight with me," Silver spoke with his head canted to the side. "If you're hiding something from me, I'd very much like to know. I can spin anything to the men, but I need to know the facts before I can make the fictions."

                Silver had a point, but on the other hand Flint had no intention of giving up her ace in the hole. Abigail Ashe, that girl Vane was bringing to ransom to her father, was the future of Nassau: the only daughter of Flint's former ally, potential once again ally, Peter Ashe.

                "The girl isn't just a girl; she is our chance at survival. She is Nassau's chance at survival," Flint said, his eyes boring into Silver's as if to make their point by intensity of their gaze on that alone. "She is the daughter of Peter Ashe, he was a friend of mine before and he might be a friend again should I provide him good reason."

                "And the good reason that you're a pirate who somehow came into custody of his daughter will simply be forgotten by the man who is, most notably, the most staunchly anti-pirate governor in the entire British Empire?" Silver's voice betrayed how laughable the thought was. Even for Silver and his fanciful tails, it was hard for him to believe that anything Flint could say to Peter Ashe that would save a single one of their lives, never mind the whole of Nassau.

                "When we struck this deal," Flint said calmly. "Your half of the bargain was that you would bring me information, and I wouldn't lie to you. Nowhere in there did I ever agree to allow you to start working your own plans and schemes."

                "Touche, but..."

                Before Silver was able to finish his rebuttal, Flint stood and took the last swig of his mug of ale. "But nothing, find out where Vane has that boat stashed and get men on it. I want to know where they're going and when they plan on leaving."

                "Right but..."

                "No more buts," Flint set the cup down and adjusted the hang of his coat, turning to leave. His boots thudded heavily on the wood planks of the upper floor of the tavern.

                Silver, left to his own advises and as always very much in love with the sound of his own voice, continued talking. "Well then, that was a good talk," his mouth pulled into a bare grimace of a smirk and he took the last swallow of the swill passed as ale on this island and slammed his cup down.


	10. Chapter 10

Accompanied by seven other seamen, the whole total of bodies aboard the small sloop stood at twelve; nine sailors, Charles, and the two women. Anne hardly thought they’d have chance if they ran into the Spanish, and even less if it was a British Man of War they came up across, but the sloop would be faster, and it’s far easier to sale in tighter to the shores once they got to Florida. No promise that those maneuvers would keep them out of the way of the guns though, so Vane had thought best to pose the whole endeavour as a private vessel.

"Tight quarters," Anne commented as she found a spot close enough to Vane to make her feel safe, not physical, but from a pecking order stand point. She had always been kept clear of on the _Ranger_ with the original crew by keeping her monstrosity firmly in Vane's shadow. Anne was, in fact, only monstrous when she was taken as a woman, and not as a pirate. As a pirate, she fit right in.  

Vane soundlessly looked over his shoulder at Anne, where she stood tethered in stark contrast to the boldly coloured, femininely dressed Abigail Ashe. It wasn't hard to see the stark difference between them, and if his heart was any softer Vane might even feel sympathy for Anne. She had been told she was a monster, impure and filthy, for as long as he had known her, but she had her moments. She'd have fought until her last drop of blood and dying breath for him when he was her captain, and she would have sold her soul for Jack Rackham until very recently. She was loyal, above all her flaws, Anne Bonny was loyal.

"What're ya starrin at?" she questioned him, that too generous mouth twisted into a low, not quite ugly sneer as her eyes reflected the pale light of the mid day sun. The trek across the island had taken longer than anticipated; apparently no one on Vane's crew factored in drawing a delicate, half starved British lady wearing a tightly laced bodice through the thick jungle and brush might take longer. Never the less, they had arrived in time to make the tide, and with a friendly wind they might make it to Charleston in just shy of two days.

"Just thinkin' Miss Ashe may not want to stand up here too long," his eyes moved to the extremely pale, even compared to Bonny, girl to Bonny's left. At least his men had seen fit to listen and cuff Anne's left hand, leaving her sword arm free should anything go awry, though he was certain the little monster was just as deadly with her left hand. He called to one of his men and instructed him to show "Miss Ashe" below deck.

"Right away, sir," he nodded briskly and then gestured to Abigail, "Right this way Miss... uh" he stumbled, catching the absolutely vicious glare from Anne. "Misses... missies? Ladies."

The three went below decks and the man led them to the Quarter Master's quarters, which while private, were about half the size of the cell Abigail had been occupying. The man left, locking the door from outside and as his footsteps disappeared, Abigail turned to Anne, looking quite panicked.

"Did you hear that? They're locking us in!" Her voice was concerned, and Anne was beginning to think that this wasn't as easy a pay day as she had thought. "What if we start sinking?"

"We drown in the boat instead of getting eaten by sharks," Anne replied, perhaps a little too glibly, as Ashe's face went even whiter. "Heard it's like going to sleep."

"You must be joking... right?" Abigail's pale brow furrowed as her dark eyes took in the enigma chained to her. She certainly didn't have the size of the man with whom she had spoken to earlier, the one who promised protection and for her to be return her to her father, for a price, of course. While the expression on Bonny’s face was typically unreadable, it gave weight to her words: she was not, in fact, joking.

There was an awkward silence between them that would stretch on until the Captain came down, confident enough that they were out of Flint's realm of influence and out to sea with no need for his direct input on simple navigation over open water.

The two women had been sitting on the narrow berth which, unfortunately, comprised the only sleeping arrangements available within the cabin. Anne had taken her hat off and was leaned against the berth's wall, her left hand extended out an awkward angle to here Ashe sat very rigidly, very stiffly, looking like she was about ready to burst into tears. Trailing behind him like a dog was another crewmember with a small tray with hard tack and ale, as well as a piece of fruit for each woman. It wasn’t by luck that Vane’s crew, herself notwithstanding, were typically physically larger and stronger than the others. He fed them well, if meagrely, when out to sea.

“The winds are favourable, if everything goes to plan, Miss Ashe, and your father cooperates, you’ll be sitting down to Sunday dinner with your family,” Vane spoke, his eyes moving from the terrified girl to the bored woman with the penetrating blue eyes, her mouth turned down with disinterest. He had no doubt that they wouldn’t be getting along, but at least Ashe isn’t trying to talk Bonny into letting her go, and for her part, Bonny had managed not to run the girl through yet. Must be a new record.

The two pairs of animal eyes met for a second, and then Vane turned to leave, the crewman quickly following as he deposited the tray on the single table in the centre of the room, not keen on being alone with Anne Bonny.

“The other one seems afraid of you,” Abigail said, as if pointing out something the room itself hadn’t noticed. “Why is that?” She desperately wanted to make some sort of contact with this woman, if she was to be chained to her for the foreseeable future, never mind that in being female she was, at least on a genetic level, like her.

“They think I’m a monster,” Anne said flatly, her eyes meeting Abigail’s with no sense of remorse or weakness, for a minute making Abigail wonder just how correct their assessment could be.

“Why … why is that?” Abigail asked, her head canting to the side as she shifted, sitting more up on the bed, her posture relaxing a little.

“Because I kill men,” Anne admitted quite bluntly, admittedly a little taken aback when the girl in front of her, rather than looking frightened or scared, simply looked confused.

“But they are pirates,” she said, her head bobbing forward and her brows drawing together in disbelief. “They kill men too, do they not?”

The initial surprise wore off and into a wry smirk as Anne gestured towards the table where the meager lunch was set. “You’d think that,” she muttered under her breath. To be realistic, Anne had no intentions of becoming “friends,” even in passing, with this girl. She was a hostage, and hopefully she would earn Bonny a place back under the mast, even if Vane was the only man who would have her on his ship these days, at least she would be on a ship. Previously, she had earned a positively fearsome reputation under him and in the days following their collective dismissal, or rather, Jack’s dismissal and Anne’s walking out to remain loyal to him, an act she now regretted, any crew would have fallen over themselves to have her among their ranks.

Admittedly, without guidance and a larger threat at her side, she had certain gone off the path; the slaughter of Hammond and 7 other crewman as a result of what they had done to Max was a bit of a rough patch, though she had never looked back without at least some sense of doing the right thing as far as that was concerned. Until the whore stole Rackham, that was. If she was honest with herself, she couldn’t quite say if she would do the same thing for Max if she was asked to again, even if the whore had promised to protect her from the fallout of her latest… incident.

The two ate in silence, though it was a much less tense one than they had spent the first half of the day in.

“It’s because you’re a woman, isn’t it?” Abigail finally blurted out, her dark eyes seemingly alight with some sort of fascination.

“Huh?” Anne, who had fallen into a partial slumber, back up against the wall of the cabin and hand resting on her knee as Ashe lay in the berth; seemed this would be the easiest way to sleep. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“They think you are monster not because you kill men, but because you are a woman who kills men,” she spoke in an excited and somewhat conspiratorial tone and it was Anne’s turn to remain on the confused and wary stage.

She looked up at the other woman, tilting her head at a more severe angle due to the fact she had pulled her hat low in an effort to try and get some sleep. “Why’s that surprising?” she asked, blinking. Anne had known this for years, since the serving girl in her father’s house. It wasn’t so much the act she had committed that was the crime, the crime was always the same. The simple fact was that Anne was born a woman but insisted on doing unwomanly things, like thinking for herself.

The moment of realisation crossed Abigail’s features and Anne recognised it. They came from different worlds, but the expectations placed on them for simply being born female were all the same. “Do you think, if I were a man, they’d be ransoming me off?”

Anne paused for a moment, debating the truth in her head before speaking. “’F you were a man, your father’d have already paid.”


	11. Chapter 11

                “What do you mean she’s gone!?” Jack Rackham’s voice went up an octave as he looked at Max with an incredulous look. “I gave you but one order regarding her, which was to make sure she didn’t leave, and you’re telling me that she did just that. Please tell me you at least know where she went, please.”

                The euphoria of taking his first prize, and unseating another captain while doing that, had been shattered when he had learned Anne was nowhere to be found; not in the streets, not at the beach, not in the inn or at the tavern either. It was like she just disappeared.

                “One of the girls said she saw Anne go to the fort during the storm that night,” Max spoke, having mixed feelings about Anne Bonny. She was a wild card, but Max had learned there were ways to temper the behaviour, most notably to not align or show one’s self as an enemy, even if perhaps she was not exactly an ally either. “And then she saw her leave, with two men and a woman. They went north. Earlier that day, someone told one of my girls that Charles Vane headed north from the fort as well.”

The night in question was the one following Jack having told her the crew of the _Colonial_ would not be accepting both shares for Max and a place for Anne, and without better options Jack had acquiesced to the prior, abandoning Anne for the first time in nearly a decade. He knew there would be consequences, but as he sat down in the hard backed chair, resting his left arm on the rest and his chin on his fist, he wondered just how severe they would be.

At the mention of the fort and Vane Jack’s eyes flicked up to Max. “Who was this other woman?”

Max’s girls were a better espionage network than any country could hope to have; she long ago learned the value of being brought so thoroughly into a man’s confidence through his bed, and she had taught her girls, once they became her girls, very well.

“Rumour has it, she is the daughter of Peter Ashe, the Governor of South Carolina,” Max said, taking a seat across the table from Jack, pouring both of them a drink from the pitcher set on the table. “But we cannot be sure as no one knows what she looks like, but the rumour continues that Vane plans to ransom the girl back to her father, and is using Anne as the girl’s body guard in the interim.”

“I see,” Jack murmured, the wheels already turning in his head. This was an interesting development.

“Vane wasn’t the first place she turned,” Max offered, as if it made a difference.

It did not. The other crews had rejected Anne based on the fact that she had a monstrous reputation, the same reason his own crew had rejected her. If even Jack Rackham wanted nothing to do with her now, what good was she? The rumours would fly across the island, and no captain would touch Anne. Jack had, if he was being entirely honest with himself, bet on that. He was confident that he could go on, even if she wasn’t patient and trusting enough, and really at this point why should she be, and make a few good prizes, prove his worth to the crew as a captain, and get her back aboard inside a month; two months tops. But now?

If Charles Vane had extended his offer of employment to her, after only rescinding it due to her staunch loyalty to Rackham, how on earth could he separate the two?

“Why did it have to be Vane?” Jack muttered aloud, his lip curling with the distaste of the memories of the man. At one time, not all that long ago but feeling as a life time had passed, the three of them had been the heads of positively the most fearsome crew Nassau had known to date.

“Do not be so afraid, I am sure we can get her back,” Max said, reaching across the table.

“No, I am afraid that you, my dear, do not quite understand Charles Vane well enough, and it’s clear that what you think you know of Anne Bonny is not entirely full. Charles is an animal, and so is she; they’ll do what animals do when you lock them in a room together and that I am upset about, but not too concerned. It’s his heading that bothers me.”

“Carolina?”

“Indeed, that’s where I first found Anne, in the hands of a very abusive man by the names of James Bonny who, to this day, is the only living creature on this planet who puts fear into our dear Anne,” Jack’s voice seemed light, but the forced smile and the facial tick in his eye gave the impression that he was entirely earnest when he said he was scared for his partner.

“You do not think Vane knows this?” Max asked, her brow furrowing as she leaned forward, as wrapt and interested in this information as she was with Silver’s information.

“No,” Jack shook his head and hand dismissively, finally picking up the drink she had poured. “No, Anne only ever told me about her husband, and probably only because she had to. We tried to buy her freedom but he double crossed us. It was all she could do to get away when she did…”

“And she ran to you, and you protected her?”

“As much as I was able to; I was already aligned with Vane, keeping the accounts for the _Ranger_. I brought her aboard and managed to bring her here,” he said, gesturing with the hand holding his tumbler around, encompassing the room and meaning the island. “Vane let her enforce herself; the first night aboard she spent it with the crew; in the morning, three men were missing their man hoods and another one had been forced to swallow his own balls. As much as the crew and the then quarter master called for her head, Vane would challenge any of them to react differently under the circumstances.”

Max listened to Jack’s story, nodding and idly twirling the tin cup in her delicate fingers. It was an unconscious trait she had originally developed as a manner of flirtation back when she started. She tried not to smile too broadly when Jack spoke about the men waking up to comrades missing body parts.

“You do care for her, still, yes?” Max’s accent caused the questions to come out lyrical, rather than crude or cruel as they might if asked by someone else.

Taken aback by the question, Jack’s wistful stare turned harshly on Max, hardening in a moment. “Yes, of course I do,” he said without hesitation. “She is just about the only person on this entire worthless island, probably this planet, about whom I care about.” He was restless and agitated, and it was coming out in his words, his body animated as he spoke. “And the worst part is, I’m the Captain of my own fucking ship and I can’t even propose to go after her. As it stands, between her and Vane, my men won’t want anything to do with going after them. Pay day or not!” He let out an exasperated sigh and swung back the remainder of his drink, letting the mug come down hard on the table before dropping his hand helplessly in his lap. For all his gilded tongue, Captain Jack Rackham was at a loss for words.

“Then I will help you get her back,” Max said solidly, standing up with her usual grace.

Jack was stunned for a moment; that was not quite the reaction he had been anticipating. “How?” he asked, not sure what else he could, or even should, ask. Max had her ways, and while they weren’t entirely mysterious, sometimes Jack would much prefer being left out of the gory details.

“Flint is after the girl as well.” The warm skinned woman’s hips shifted, swinging from side to side, making her skirts swish around her feet.

“Is he now? And how do you know this?” Jack leaned forward, resting his arms on the table as he implored Max to continue.

“The same way I know all of my information, Jack,” she said, her head tilting and a devilish glint coming to her eyes. “Now, you may have to compromise; Flint may require payment.”

Jack, much a kin to a child desiring his most comforting possession, nodded. “Anything, Max, please,” he spoke his broken sentence with the breathy voice of a man blinded by need, blinking several times and shaking his head. Need of Anne, surely, but not entirely. He needed to prove to her he cared, and he also needed to show he was worth a damn, and would come through for her if, God damn it, she would just listen to him. Prior to before he had never done wrong by her, and even now with his men warming to him, he entirely planned to live up to his promise and bring her aboard the _Colonial_ as soon as it was possible. He just needed time. And Anne.

“Max, I do not think with all the words I know I can describe how utterly and completely lost I am without her,” he finally admitted in the tone of a defeated man.

Without missing a beat Max stepped forward and reached out, taking Jack first by the shoulders, then as she was allowed closer, her arms cupped the back of his head. She held him to her stomach and made a soft, cooing noise, as if to soothe an upset child. “Shh, ma cher, I will help you get your lover back,” she whispered into the top of his head, his hair smelling strongly of the sea still. He nuzzled into her and she could feel his arms wrap her small waist, drawn smaller with a corset to extenuate her full hips and bosom.

She continued to coo to him, stroking his hair as he pulled her tight. While many on this island could not understand the feeling of emptiness that having to choose against a dear one caused, Max could. She remembered when the final line between her and Eleanor cast her out of Guthrie’s favour for the final time, and the ever burning desire to return to it. But unlike Max and Eleanor, a blind man could see the benefits Jack and Anne drew from each other, made painfully clear when they had separated.

Were he not so focussed on the return of Anne to the island, he might have noticed that while Max’s actions may seem entirely altruistic, they still played in her favour. Jumping to help reunite them, Max would, hopefully, retain her favour with Anne. After all, while Jack had indeed chosen Max, or more correctly the valuable information that her girls could provide, over Anne, Max didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter herself. She could always opine that had she been confronted with it, she would have told Jack to stay loyal to Anne. A lie, but a sweet and utterly believable one when it fell from such supple and hungry lips as Max possessed.


	12. Chapter 12

“You ask as if this you mean to borrow a shirt,” the incredulous voice of John Silver echoed through Max’s room at the in. 

Seated at the table was Jack Rackham, pouring himself further and further into the bottom of a pitcher of heavily watered down rum. Max had given up on allowing him anything full strength; he needed all the charm he could muster if he was to work himself a spot onto the  Walrus as it sailed to chase Vane and his crew. Still, even with the weakened liquor, he was putting a volume back large enough to overcome the disadvantage Max had given him, or so he hoped. 

“It is for love!”

“It’s for Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny,” John kept his voice low as his eyes met with the slightly glazed expression of the clearly depressed man at the table. “Firstly, I’d hardly call those two star crossed lovers, and secondly, no.”  The idea of those two embodying love was like Charles Vane proposing to be an angel of mercy, or Silver claiming to be an altruist. Not only was it laughable, it was downright insane. 

“I beg of you,” she said, reaching out for his hand and stroking a gentle, smooth thumb across the back of his knuckles. Once before they had tried to sell  a secret, and actually in doing so set Jack, the buyer, against Flint, the man from whom they had originally stolen the secret to begin with. Now Max was attempting to court a favour from the latter on behalf of  the prior . “You saw what she is capable of now; if nothing else, when she is with Jack, she is calmer.”

“Oh, and I’m sure Mister Hammond and the other seven agree with you entirely,” he shot back quickly, referencing the former  Ranger men whom Anne had decimated with the assistance of Eleanor Guthrie, on behalf of Max no less. 

At the mention of this incident, the woman’s full lips pulled into a tightened expression, the corners drawing a straight, unimpressed line across her round face as her eyes narrowed. “She had her reasons for doing what she did that night,” her voice a defense, since she was, after all, forced to pay not only for her part in the deal going south, but also Silver’s. “And as far as I am concerned, for all that went on with Mister Hammond, you have yet to pay your share, which means you owe me.”

“Well,” Silver said, ever up for a battle of the wits. “Perhaps I do, but I would be hard pressed to imagine that Flint feels he owes you anything.”

“I’ll pay…” 

The voice was weak, and unexpected in the back and forth between Max and John, and all four dark eyes turned to Jack where he sat, barely upright, only somewhat conscious, but in his eyes there was something deeper than the drunken gloss which made his speech hard to understand. 

“What?” It was Silver’s turn to narrow his eyes as they both looked at Rackham as if he had gone absolutely insane.

“I said I’ll pay. Tell Flint I’ll pay. I’ll work the rigging; I’ll give him my share from my last haul,” his voice grew stronger and he pushed himself into a wobbling stance.  “Whatever it takes.”

“That’s all well and good, Jack,” John said, not bothering with the formal title of Captain as the man was clearly intoxicated and not in any state to discuss things as a captain. “But he very well could say no altogether. You did try to steal the  Urke prize out from under him, after all.”

“Yes, and you were the one who wanted to sell it to me,” he said, then gesturing to Max. “Through her. And yet, you’re in Flint’s confidence,  and Max is once again, as always, a central part to all information on this island,  so I don’t see why you  can’t persuade him to give me passage  to Charleston.” Jack was beginning to recover himself, finding the bravado which he was known for as his tongue once again seemed to be gilded with silver. “You managed to work your way up from a very poorly trusted cook, and if I’m to be honest I hear that was more of an honorary title than anything else, to Flint’s confidant and de facto, if not in actuality, quarter master. So, I do think, my dear boy, you are more than capable of convincing Flint that this is a good idea. And if you can’t, I’m sure you can at least arrange a meeting so as I may try my hand at it.” 

John looked from Max to Jack and then back again. It was all just al little surreal, but he had to give it to Jack Rackham, the man had charm, even if he also had a severely slurred speech pattern and looked like a strong wind would plant him firmly on his backside. 

“Fine, I will set up a meeting for you two, but I should think it would serve your needs best if you let me set it for later on today, when he’s dried out a bit,” he spoke to Max and she nodded, squeezing  his hand, a tight smile on her full lips. 

“Thank you, ma  cher ,” she used her best voice, even though she knew Silver wasn’t buying into the demure prostitute role and hadn’t since she formally introduced and exposed herself after their first encounter. 

Good to his word, Silver set the meeting up for later that evening, though Jack was beginning to get nervous. If too much time passed between when Vane and his crew left and when he was able to leave it could all be for naught; it could be too late before he even stepped foot on Flint’s boat, and there was no way of knowing it. 

Max had refused to give him any more rum, insisting on tea or coffee to "sober" him up, but he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to be sober for what he was about to do. He was going to have to put on a Hell of a show to convince Flint of all people that he give him a ride to Carolina, for the sake of Anne no less. 

Much to everyone's surprise, when Flint arrived he was not alone, but flanked on either side by a woman. To his left was Eleanor Guthrie and on his right was a dark haired woman who Jack was pretty sure was the ever mysterious Missus Barlow the rumour mill had been chattering about.  No surprise that Guthrie had found a way to make herself relevant to the task at hand; she had an innate skill, it seemed, to sit herself at the centre of every event of any importance on this island, even more so when those events involved Charles Vane. 

Jack watched skeptically as the three stepped into the tavern and Max ushered them up the stairs. Silver was waiting with Rackham in the office, watching the other man pace nervously back and forth, his mouth moving but no sound coming out of it. 

"Oh yes, that'll certainly help," he commented to Rackham. "Convince Flint you've positively lost your mind - that'll convince him to allow you on his boat." Silver rolled his dark eyes and stood up, grabbing Rackham by the shoulders,  just to make him listen to him. "Before you may have had my pity, but now you've got my reputation in your hair brained idea, which, if I might be so bold, is precarious as it is when it comes to Flint, so I don't think I'll be leaving this anymore to chance than I need to."

"Oh," Jack said with a knowing smirk, his old self returning. "Don't you worry, Mister Silver." Her exaggerated the pronunciation of the man's last name, a knowing look on his face as his eyebrows bolted up. "I have an ace up my sleeve yet, my good man," he clapped Silver in the shoulder and stepped away as the door opened, the three women and Flint coming into the room. 

"I hear Captain Jack Rackham can't get his crew to sail after Anne Bonny after she ran off with Charles Vane to Carolina," Eleanor took the point and caused Jack to narrow his eyes at the woman.

"And just where is your worry in this, Miss Guthrie? Does the venom in your voice come from some ill-conceived hatred for me? Or is it more for concern my Anne will be spending her nights with Vane?" Jack said, seemingly unaffected by the prospect, while Eleanor paled, revealing her jealousy.  "That's what I thought, so, my advice to you, Madame, is if you wish to remain a part of this discussion,  though heaven knows why you are a part of it to begin with, you allow me and Flint to speak , and you shall do all within your power to keep those jealous barbs on your tongue hidden ."

Eleanor stood agape at Flint who simply just nodded. Point for Rackham. 

"So why should I bring you to Carolina, Rackham?" he said stiffly, having neither seen nor spoken to Rackham since a failed attempt to bring Vane and the  Ranger to bare under his direction in search of the  Urke .  If anything, Rackham had fallen further from grace and had yet to draw himself back up to a useful level, Flint was finding it hard to believe that he had anything to offer that Flint and his crew would benefit from.

"Well, allow me to answer your question with another question. Do you know where Vane is going?"  Jackham smirked, picking up his chipped china coffee mug and taking a swig of the bitter brew. 

"Of course. Charleston," Flint said, his brows furrowing as spoke, as if Rackham was speaking another language. "He's going to return Peter Ashe's daughter."

"Ah, yes, but no," Rackham extenuated his point with the wagging of the index finger on both of his hands. "Peter Ashe is whose attention he wants, but he doesn't want the attention of the entire navy which is anchored there.  If he's half as smart as he would have needed to be to survive as long as he has, he'll make port somewhere else."

And with that small bit of information, Jack had the attention of everyone in the room.  In retrospect, it made perfect sense. Charleston was a hub of activity and hardly the type of place where a known and wanted pirate like Charles Vane would want to venture anywhere close. He was mad, and an animal, but he wasn’t stupid. 

"You know where he's going to land." Flint was the first one to get it, and he had to give it to Rackham, that was a slick, and extremely useful, piece of information. "How do you know where he plans to land?" 

" Because, I sailed with Charles for almost ten years, which included several journeys up to the colonies,” Rackham, now seeming entirely absorbed in the attention he had from the room, had no desire to stop. It had been a while since he had commanded a room like this, and it was utterly intoxicating. “ Not only is Vane bringing Miss Abigail Ashe home, he is also, unknowingly, returning  Misses James Bonny," he paused, seeing the  glazed and confused look on everyone's faces, save Flint and Barlow. "You know her as "Anne" I suppose ," he clarified. "Where was I? Yes, unwittingly Charles Vane is returning Anne to her husband." 

"And this is why you're willing to go to this length?" Eleanor asked, her brow still furrowed and creased with concentration. She crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her weight to her left leg . "Now who is the jealous one? Perhaps you shouldn't have chosen Max over Anne." And here  Eleanor set her other jealousy in; her residual feelings towards Max, and the feud which remained there. 

Max threw Eleanor a wicked stare and sucked her teeth at the woman who simply sneered back, her hips adjusting as she turned her weight away from them, her head tilted at a haughty angle. If she was trying to prove she was over Max, she was failing miserably, and if she was trying to prove she had learned her lesson about meddling in other people’s affairs after the last large blow up with Vane, she was equally failing. 

"If it were a mere case of jealousy, Miss Guthrie , I would be less inclined to  risk what shreds of my reputation remain, but as it stands, this is about more  than me, or my hurt ego," he insisted, preparing himself for a full Rackham rant. He drew himself to his full size and bore down on the young woman, and while nowhere near as  broad through the chest as Vane, he was considerably taller and able to lean over her.  "What you fail to see is that this is not about me at all, this is about Anne. I wronged her and because of that, she is going head long towards disaster." As he spoke he began to walk Eleanor back, stepping with each step she took, bolstered by the fact that no one else seemed keen on stopping him from putting Eleanor Guthrie in her place.

"Charles Vane has taken the one person I genuinely care for, the woman I consider my wife and partner, and he is taking her, knowingly or unknowingly, into the hands of the only man she has  ever been truly afraid of in her entire life and I am not there to protect her," his voice had risen to a pitch and his animation was becoming more wild.  "Please tell me you see why I might be more than little frustrated by how this situation is turning out?!" He stamped his foot as a method of making his point even bolder, as if he needed that. 

Eleanor, backed into the wall, was finding it hard not to keep her eyes focussed on the almost wild expression on Jack’s face. 

“We have all seen the desperate lengths you will go to for the sake of someone who can satisfactorily manipulate the thing between your legs,” Rackham continued, his eyes moving over the young woman’s body before back to her face. “Never mind the one between your ears. Please do not doubt my motives regarding Anne when you yourself are so much worse for wear.”

Jack had been so focussed on Eleanor, and it seemed everyone else was so focussed on Jack that no one noticed when  Flint and Barlow slipped out into the next room.

"James, you need to do this," Miranda observed, putting a hand on Flint's shoulder as he turned away from her, looking out over the terrace of the brothel. 

"I know," he muttered, his eyes narrowed and his mouth set in a grim line. "I'll never be able to find where they plan on making land..." He sighed and shook his head, rubbing his right hand over his mouth, scratching up against the grain of his facial hair. 

"I meant because it's the right thing to do," she corrected him, following his line of sight. "He seems to legitimately care for her. That he can offer you help is simply a bonus."

Flint narrowed his eyes at Miranda, knowing that the woman had constantly had the ability to push his buttons. They knew all of each other's secrets, much like Anne and Jack. "You'd go to these lengths to come to my rescue, wouldn't you?"

"I wouldn't put myself  in the position of not being able to control my men enough to go after you," Flint shot back, turning to see Miranda's rather stern face.  With a narrowing of her eye and a downward twitch of her full mouth she managed to secure an eye rolling capitulation. “I already said I was going to do it.”

“I know,” she said with a sigh. “I wonder what he’d say about that; doing the right thing for the wrong reasons?” He, of course, being the man they shared, her husband and his lover,  Thomas Hamilton. 

“I’m sure he’d wonder why I’m willing to go to such lengths for one lunatic when I didn’t do the same for him…” Flint murmured, his eyes lost and fixated on not an object, but a time, before they came to Nassau. 

Thomas had been imprisoned by his father at Bedlam, a hospital for the mentally infirm, as a manner with which to deal with political boisterousness he had extolling, not the least of which was a full pardon for every pirate who wished to turn privateer in the King’s Navy and the installation of a proper governor in Nassau. Thomas’ father, Lord Hamilton, had used knowledge of his son’s “perversion” to exhort obedience from not only Thomas, but his wife and his lover , then known as James Turner . The latter two were exiled, condemned as adulterous lovers and sent away, while Thomas had been  committed, siting “intense grief” after finding out that his dearest friend and wife had been engaging in a torrid love affair behind his back and in his own house, no less. 

A warm hand on the back of his hand brought him out of his introspection as Miranda spoke up. “And I’m sure he would understand the nuances in the situations,” she said gently.  “Sometimes there are tough choices you have to make.”

Flint wished she would just stop talking but he set his jaw and kept his mouth shut. He cast a wary eye over his shoulder at Rackham as he loomed over Guthrie, confident that while the man might be shaking her with his words, he wouldn’t so much as lay a hand on her. He had made his reputation on a wicked tongue, not a wicked temper. 

“Should we go back in there?” Miranda suggested, following James’ line of sight into the room. 

“Let him tire himself out,” Flint spoke in a disinterested tone. If nothing else, recent exploits had certainly told him not to trust Eleanor Guthrie implicitly. Much like her father, or any pirate on the island for that matter, the woman needed to know what was in it for her, and it better be good and more than anyone else could offer or her support would quickly sway. Charles Vane had been victim to the girl’s tantrums more than once, and Flint had no intention of allowing that to happen to him. 

The shouting eventually died down, and to her credit, Eleanor had gotten a few shots in on Jack while he was going after her, though they seemed to bounce off his chest with far greater ease. When things became quiet once more, James nodded to Miranda and they returned. 

Jack still had Eleanor against the wall, while Max and Silver had taken a seat at a small table, and the room had managed to retain the unspeakable tensions of the request.

“I’ll do it,” Flint said, interrupting the latest tirade of Rackham, who for his part, looked the part of a stunned hare come across by an unsuspecting fox. 

“You… you’ll do it?” he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, a nervous but all together triumphant smirk on his lips. “Of course you will; only makes good business sense, right? You wouldn’t want to sail into port at Charleston with a Spanish Man of War any more than Vane would want to sail in with his black, would you?”

Flint inhaled deeply to avoid any comments he might regret. As much as it was true Rackham needed him, Flint also needed Rackham which was a sorry place to be in. 

“So it’s settled then?” the reasonable, if not opportunistic, voice of Silver chimed up as he sat up from Max’s table. 

“Not quite; when do we sail?” Rackham pinned the question rather carefully. He would prefer if the answer was right now, but he knew that wasn’t reasonable. The  Walrus had been out for almost a month, if not more, time was dragging and flying in intervals for the last little while for Jack and he had quite lost track of it. 

“ Horn igold’s men are preparing to storm the fortress, that should provide sufficient cover for us leaving,” Flint spoke in a commanding, matter of fact tone. “With what remains of Vane’s men tied up in the fighting, few will notice us turning away.”

“And you’re sure your information is correct?” Miranda asked Max, a needy expression on her face. She knew Abigail Ashe, once upon a time, in her past life. Her dearest hope was that th e young girl would remember her. Hopefully. A fter all, while her clothes may have changed she still bore a strong resemblance to the woman she was in England. 

“Yes, Madame,” Max spoke with a nod, her eyes closing as her head inclined. “My girls saw a dark haired, fair skinned girl in a very pretty dress , shackled to Anne Bonny, being led out of the fortres s while she was with her lover.”

Barlow made an expression somewhere between acceptance and distaste. It was hard for her to accept this information as truth; first she hadn’t seen it for herself, and second just how trustworthy were Max’s prostitutes? They knew this information was valuable.  Could she really put it past them to lie? James, for all his mistrust of everyone else’s motives, seemed to be willing to trust the whore and her girls, but he had trusted Guthrie in t he past and she too hard turned  on him. 

“How can she be sure?” Flint asked, eyeing Max who’s eyes went to Guthrie. 

“Why not ask her?” Max said eyeing her former lover. “She was the one who told Vane you were at the tavern, no? How else would he have known?” Max was lying, purposely baiting Eleanor and using the feud between the two captains to get back at the wrongs she had perceived done to her, but she was also solidifying her position. At the end of this meeting the prevailing opinion would be that Max knew everyone’s secrets, even if she didn’t.

“Why you..!” Eleanor’s indignant voice caught as she lunged towards Max. A quick move from Rackham caught the blonde around the waist and while she was bigger than Anne, both taller and possessing a body more like a woman, less like an adolescent boy, she didn’t fight nearly as hard as Anne and Jack was able to pick her up and swing her back around while Silver stepped around Max.

“This is absolutely enough!” Miranda Barlow raised her voice for the very first time, her expression gone from any sort of emotion to a very cold stare between the women. This caused a shocked and tense silence to envelope the room; no one had expected such a powerful exclamation from the Christian woman . “Whatever business the two of you have yet to finish, this is not about you. A girl’s life hangs in the balance, and if we are to believe Mister Rackham, two girls. I suggest you either finish your business another time or drop it all together, either way, I wish nothing more than to know if we are certain that it was Abigail Ashe Anne Bonny was escorting away from the fort this morning.”

The two younger women looked at Miranda, and so did the three men. Her composure returned she looked at Max and nodded. “If your girl is certain that she saw a girl of that description, and all of your girls are accounted for, and no one else can think of a woman who would fit that description, we must assume that it is Abigail,” her voice was once again composed, the regal, commanding voice of a woman brought up in society to believe that when she chose to spoke, she should chose her words carefully. 

There was silence, but from behind John Silver’s back Max nodded. 

“Then let us go,” she said turning, her head held high, all eyes on her as she did. 

“Us?” Jack whispered to Flint as he got closer. “Surely she can’t be thinking she’s coming, can she?”

“Oh come on now, Rackham,” Flint laughed at the discomfort in Jack’s face as he spoke. “Surely you of all people can’t think there’s anything wrong with a woman on a ship.” Jack gave him a thin laugh and a half-hearted sneer as he was tugged along.  “She knew Ashe’s daughter and thinks that she can keep the girl calm and compliant. Probably the same state Vane was trying to elicit with Bonny, though I dare think we’ll be more successful.”

“Yes, I suppose,” Jack sneered once more and moved out from under Flint’s arm and the three left, leaving Silver between Max and Guthrie. After a tense moment the lady Guthrie decided it was best she simply left, having already said too much, and vacated. 

“Do you think Flint is telling the truth? That London will see fit to let us rule ourselves?” Max asked, her already over-sized eyes wide. Jaded as she was, this was a different kind of hope; this was a hope shared by more than one person, a dream that was spread out so thin but also very touchable. 

“I don’t know,” Silver turned to face the girl, still holding onto his coat. “But frankly, I’m only in this so far as it takes me to the  Urke , and if you’re as smart as everyone thinks you are, you won’t be around to find out whether or not Flint’s plans work out.” He squeezed her hands in his. “My offer still stands, you know.”

“To run off with you? And be what? And do what?” Max became agitated and threw his hands down, stepping back. She had worked too hard, and too long, for what little she had and could call her own, and she knew far better than to plan a romantic escape from any life. 

“Anything we want!” Silver spoke with a grandiose tone, his arms spreading open and his head shaking, tossing the dark, sea spray scented curls about his face, framing his gleaming smile.  “Look, you don’t need to answer me now, but have an answer for when I come back from the  Urke .”  He planted a light kiss on Max’s forehead and then scampered off after Flint and Company.    



	13. Chapter 13

The night fell on Bonny and her bunk mate, the women spending a quiet dinner of salt beef talking over a small oil lamp.  Anne felt herself liking this girl, in spite of herself. She hadn't wanted to; it would be much easier if she simply thought of her as another spoiled rich kid, no better than the likes of Jonathan or Eleanor, but for her age and status, Abigail Ashe was turning out to be rather... likable. 

"Do you realize that I was supposed to be married off to a man almost as old as my father when I was sixteen? Luckily he died before the marriage could happen," she pulled at the salt beef and sniffed it cautiously. 

"Best not to labour it; just eat it," Anne said, her mouth turned down in her resting snarl, as she nodded towards the  salt beef in the girl's hands. "It  ain't gonna taste any better if you smell it." 

"I suppose not," she said tentatively, still not so sure about it. She took a bite and made a face, but swallowed it down with a swig from the fat bottomed rum bottle between the two of them.  " Augh , that's almost as bad," she said, wiping the back of her mouth with her hand in an unceremonious manner. 

"Gets better each time you swallow," she said with a wry smirk, taking the bottle from Abigail and taking a swig, washing away the taste of salt beef and hard tack biscuits. 

"I've told you my story, what's yours?" Abigail asked, leaning over, her elbows resting on her knees and her chin on her balled fists. Anne thought for a minute that she looked every bit the child she was supposed to be, eager to hear the wild and, no doubt, idealistically romantic story of Anne Bonny,  the female pirate. If she wasn't right there, and her only conversation and company for another day, at least, she might have rolled her eyes. 

"Not much to tell, really," she said, breaking the last biscuit in half and handing one piece to Abigail. 

"Oh, I hardly believe that!" the other woman said, her posh accent coming through as her hard " ar " sound was followed by such a delicate finish as she began to nibble on her last provision. "Besides, I've already spoken for an entire day; it will be a very long night and a longer day tomorrow if you remain silent this whole time."

She had a point, but it wasn't like Anne to open up. Hell, had Jack not been there to witness the things he did, there was a good chance he would have never known. The Captain hadn't learned the full extent of  Bonny's abuses until very recently when he had seen the scars that covered her back.  "Not too far off yours, I guess, ' cept I ran off with the pirates rather than get kidnapped by ' em ," she said with a dismissive shrug, taking a bite of her biscuit.

Abigail remained silent, hoping that it would encourage Bonny to speak, but it didn't seem to be working out that way. "You were a child bride?" she asked, but Anne was already far off, back to her years spent in Carolina. 

"You have to take care of that servant, Anna," Jonathan had said, stuffing the shirt tails back into his britches in a rough fashion, his dark eyes following the girl as she disappeared up the stairs. "You're reputation hinges on no one finding out." And with that, as quickly as Jonathan had begun, he was gone, the implication solid; she was on her own.

Your reputation, not our reputations, and certainly not his; no, only Anne  Cormac would suffer if she were to be revealed as deflowered, even if she wasn't a willing participant in the act to begin with. He was just doing as all boys do, it was Anne who was at fault for allowing him to, after all. She was the girl, almost a woman at thirteen, she knew what was right and what was wrong, and parading around like a harlot and letting boys up under her skirt was definitely wrong.

But...

As Jonathan had said, they were to be married, right?

Anne followed the girl, Mary, up the stairs soon as she got herself righted but it was too late, she had disappeared, and if Anne went searching for her, someone was bound to figure out something was wrong. Anne and Mary, while around the same age, never really got along well. It wasn't that Anne thought herself better than Mary, quite the opposite; Anne wanted to do everything the boys did - ride horses, play in the dirt, go hunting, and Mary, even though she was from a poor family, thought it utterly distasteful that a lady, especially one of Anne's social and economic status, should engage in such base activities. 

It took Anne a few days to simply "happen" upon her, and the girl was in the kitchen, scrubbing the floors while the kitchen staff were preparing for a large dinner that William was planning to celebrate the signing of the marriage contract between Jonathan and Anne.  There were banquettes to cook, silver ware to polish, tables to be set and dresses to be properly set, including the one that Anne would wear. 

Mary eyed Anne wearing a rather dull smock, not too much different than the one Mary wore, but not quite as staine d and in considerably better shape. For a while, Mary had received Anne's cast offs, but when the girls entered puberty Mary developed into a buxom young girl, while Anne remained straight, thin and rather willowy.  This meant that Mary's supply of "new" clothing ended abruptly and she had to either buy her own or suffer the hand me downs from other servants. 

"Didn't recognise you with your skirts down," Mary spoke boldly. She was well protected by the matron, the woman who ran the household servants and house slaves. She was not Anne's mother, who had been a servant herself, but rather a paid employee of William  Cormac . This protection gives her reason to feel bold when it came to gossip around Anne and the details she found out in that stairwell. 

The red h aired girl looked down at the dirt smudged, round face of the girl scrubbing the floors, her muddy brown hair pulled back but falling out of her bun. The plump form stood up and brushed her hands on her skirt. "I wonder if you're  dad'll be  so proud of you when he learns that you let that boy get in  ya . Wonder what the boy's  father'll think?" There was a twisted smirk on the round face and Anne could feel her eye twitch.

Anne had a temper; it wasn't a secret. Even so, no one expected the redhead to lash out quite as she did. 

Without thinking, Anne reached out with her left hand an snatched the sharp paring knife from where it sat on the counter and reached forward with her right hand. Her face was set, her mouth a grim line and the pale blue eyes narrowed into slits. 

Even years later, when asked, Anne still couldn't remember what she was thinking. She could remember the hardness of the bone handle in her hand; the somewhat cold material which warmed to her hand quickly, and then grew hot and hard to hang onto as it became covered in blood. She could remember the hate, the disgust and superiority fade into fear across the servant girl's face.  The feel of the front of the girl's coarse, serge dress as she pulled on the neck, plunging the knife into her throat and withdrawing it. She could remember the resistance of her skin and flesh as she thrust the weapon into her stomach several times as well, repeating until the girl no longer stood on her own and sunk into a bloody pile on the floor she had just finished cleaning. 

More than anything, Anne remembered the smell of the blood. Hot, sticky, tinged with iron and just a little bit sweet. The memory of Mary's blood, years down the road, would still make Anne's mouth water.  It was the first time she had ever taken a life; prior to this she hadn't even killed an animal, but suddenly, it felt like something inside of her had opened up. 

Mary didn't have a chance to scream before the blade slit her throat and a thick gush of red came forth.  The red washed away all that was muddy and dirty stains which covered  the girl's clothing, leaving only a red black stain in its wake. Anne stood transfixed for a moment, watching the red spread through the rest of the fabric before pooling on the floor, surging towards her feet. 

As if waking up from an unexpected nod off, Anne stood straight and looked from her hand still holding the  knife , slicked with the dead girl's blood and the very clearly murdered girl laying on the ground. She wasn't worried about being caught, it was Carolina, it would be easy to convince someone that it was a slave who was responsible, a runaway, not from her father's plantation. 

There were several heart beats as she waited for the gurgling to stop, to make sure Mary was thoroughly dead, before she crossed herself and let out a blood curdling scream to alert her father and the rest of the house hold, as if she was coming across Mary's body by accident, for the first time. 

"Are you quite alright?" Ashe repeated, her voice growing louder, loud enough to bring Anne back from the past where she had gone to. 

" Hm ? Oh, yes," she muttered, her eyes half hooded as she nodded. "Fine," she repeated, her blue eyes, pale but possessing very large, deep pupils, looked at the girl for a moment.  She hadn't thought about her past in many years, and now twice in as many days she had caught herself remembering the years before she and Jack had hooked up. 

"You look pale?" Ashe's voice implored, her brow drawing together. The girl was all together far too curious for her own good, Anne thought as she turned a critical glare  to the girl sitting across from her.

"Not used to being under the deck," Anne muttered, her mouth turning down into her trademark sneer. This was going to be a long journey indeed, Anne thought to herself.    



	14. Chapter 14

The Spanish Man o War was a unique craft as handled by pirates , Jack noted as he climbed aboard. A craft of this size would easily be able to carry much of the potential prize Flint had been after - it was fortuitous indeed that he had been able to capture it, especially since he had since learned the fate of the  Walrus . 

He stood on the bow, eyeing Silver who was in turn eyeing him back. On the other side of Silver stood Flint, with Miranda Barlow on the other side, both watching the horizon. At least they had been able to leave the Guth rie woman on Nassau, Jack thought to himself as they set off into the sea, the sun setting to their west. It was supposed to be bad luck to set sail so close to nightfall, but there were somethings that just couldn't wait. 

Currently, Rackham found himself feeling restless, useless. This wasn't his ship; he couldn't give orders, he didn't have a role to play , and it was clear that there was much residual resentment with the remains of the  Walrus crew towards Jack for his earlier attempts to steal the  Urke 's gold from under their noses . He was simply along for the ride until they got closer to the shore line when he would divulge Vane's secret breach point. 

Oh how did it come to this? Rackham thought to himself as he  crossed to the rail over looking the bow of the boat, lean ing his forearms against the sturdy post of the Man o War. He and Anne had been thick as thieves since she was 13 years old, since he saved her from that rotten shit Vane was, unknowingly, taking her back to. Of course, he mused to himself, aboard Vane's ship there was a good chance that Bonny wouldn't risk the possible confrontation required to reassert ownership of his wife. 

Above and beyond all of his many other faults , James Bonny was a coward. 

As they sailed off, Jack's mind drifted, back to the first time he laid eyes on the Missus Anne Bonny, back in Charlestown some eight years ago.

Jack had heard the story of Anne Bonny long before he met her.  Hardly a woman, the 13 year old Anne Bonny had met her husband and fled her father's plantation after being denounced as no longer a virgin by her fiancé causing a scandal. There were rumours that the young girl was trouble, that influenced by James Bonny she later killed her father, setting fire to his plantation and claimed all the old man's wealth for herself. Or rather, for James, since Anne had no ability to hold property or have wealth of her own. 

It was in this setting that she was put to work at a tavern he had won in a game of cards; serving ale and taking his abuse, as well as the abuse of the men on his so-called pirate crew. Jack was freshly made quarter master on the  Ranger , he and Vane were as close as brothers, and he was flush with cash, looking to spend after a hearty prize taken a few weeks earlier. As one of the few pirate ships with a secret breach point, the  Ranger   had a unique ability to get things to the mainland without use of the extensive fence system set up in the Car ibbean . Fortuitous for times when the Captain and the fence's daughter were having lovers quarrels as they were now. 

Crews dispersed as they were wont to do, and Jack had found his way into a charming, if one was to use the term loosely, hole in the wall said to be owned by fellow pirates. There were loud cheering and music coming from behind the doors, which all seemed like a good enough sign, so flush with cash and ready to be relieved of such a burden, Rackham pushed through the doors. 

Nothing in his career as a  nare -do-well pirate had prepared him for the scene. 

What he had interpreted as delighted screams of willing ladies and the riotous laughter of their paying partners was actually a single girl, held up on the bar, her skirts flipped up obscuring her face, while two men held her down, and a third appeared to force himself into her.  He assumed it was forced, as she kicked heavily at his stomach twice, forcing him to remount and earning herself a solid punch to the stomach. 

Stunned into inaction, Jack simply stared for a moment, his mouth agape. Sure, he had seen rape before, but this? Even pirates had morals, aye? And many a thing could be done with a child, but in Jack's mind only the depraved or barbaric would do this.  He'd learn later that Anne's youthful face made her look younger than she was, but even at her age it was inappropriate. 

"Excuse me," he spoke with his usual, mellow tenor voice, coughing slightly, hoping that the two sounds would be audible over the chaos going on at the counter. When it was clear he was either not heard or being ignored, he cleared his throat louder and called out again, "Excuse me!"

"Wait  yer sodding turn!" Was the response he got from the man atop the child. 

As the man, to be sure a hulking beast of a creature, turned to yell at Jack he could see the face of the screaming banshee being held down. One eye was swollen, the other red from crying. In all, she was hardly the breath taking woman who drove his lust now, but rather a pit iable figure. Something worthy of being protected. 

There were limits of what a man could take , even for pirates, even for ones who had a reputation of using his words more than his weapons. The helpless, terrified eyes, impossibly large, which had peered from the small face over the large man's shoulder was just too much.

He can't even remember if he had made the conscious thought, but his dagger was already in hand, and shortly after in the back of the man doing his nasty work. Careful to aim the tip upwards, Jack found it slide into his body, under his ribs, just has he had seen the Captain do a hundred times or more. Out of sheer luck he hit the man's heart and he dropped quickly, but his two friends were now alerted to the problem. 

Letting go of the girl, who seemed to half roll half fall behind the safety of the counter as the two unwashed men leapt over it at Jack.  Never one to full out run from a fight, but not one to run full out into one either, Jack was caught in a quandary. While he wasn't useless with a sword, he wasn't Charles, and he had no sword. Merely the dagger which he had used on the first man, which had inconveniently decided it didn't want to come loose, so remained buried in the back of the man now dead, or very nearly so, on the floor. 

So, with this in mind, Jack wasn't at all unpleased to hear a booming voice come from the back of the tavern, the kitchen quarters, and a shadowed figure following it. 

"What's all this then?" The voice called, his accent distinctly Irish though it's pitch not as melodic as some that Jack had heard. As he stepped into the light Jack could see features which, perhaps at one time were handsome, but a life of hard luck, lost fights and drink had taken its toll and he wasn't any better for wear. For a moment he thought he might be in luck, this man looked old enough to be the girl's father. Surely, even in a place like this, a man would take the assault on his daughter as an assault on himself, yes?

"Well, good Sir," Jack started, holding his hands out, palms facing down in a nonthreatening manner. "I came in to buy a drink, and these gentlemen, and their companion on the floor, seemed to have been taking advantage of the barmaid. The one you'll find cowering behind the counter."

"Right, so?" The man was behind the counter now and pulled the young girl to her feet, roughly holding her face, i nspecting her face. " Nothin ' broke," he growled roughly, pushing her away. The frail bird of a child fell to the floor, which Jack noted dropped her out of everyone's line of sight, especially when the assumed owner/father rounded the corner. "Well, still doesn't tell why you killed one of my crew."

"Well," Jack stammered, his generous mouth pulling tight at the corners as his eyebrows furrowed inwards. That the situation would require more of an expla nation than what he had already provided perplexed Jack. "Well, c rew or not, they were raping what I assume is your daughter and I --"

There was a sharp bark of laughter from the man, accompanied by the derisive peels from the assistant assailants.  "She's m' no good wife, an if the crew fancies a round she knows better than to say no."

Jack had heard, witnessed and perpetrated a lot of immoral acts in his time, but the gang rape of a child bride? Even his stomach turned at the prospect. "Well then," he muttered, feeling increasingly uncomfortable and out of place, not to mention a little sick to his stomach. "I suppose I've made a bit of a mistake then. I'm sure we can, uh, figure this out between us, like gentlemen, no?" 

The girl had scurried off, and the man was now advancing towards Jack, the assistants in the assault seemingly willing to lag behind and watch the goings on, no desire to get in a skirmish themselves. "No," was the only response that came from Bonny as he advanced. 

Back on the Spanish Man o War, Jack pursed his lips as he let out a sigh , remembering the fight that broke out that night.  From that moment, the first time those eyes met his, he was enchanted. He would move the mountains and the sea for that woman, and he tossed it all away for the chance to sail again. What a fool he was. 

"I recognise that look," the warm voice of Miranda Barlow, a woman on this voyage for the seemingly dubious reason that Abigail Ashe's father was a one time friend in a past life, and that the girl may be more inclined to behave and believe in Barlow more than yet another group of pirates. 

" Hm ?" Jack's eyebrows quirked as he tilted his head, craning to see her as she came to his side. 

"The lengths we go to for the people we love," Miranda's voice was calm, and her bearing was, as always, prim. 

Jack eyed her, narrowing his dark orbs, his mouth drawing into a thin line. He didn't trust Barlow, after all she was very much aligned with Flint, to whom he was naturally disposed to be against, but at the same time, she had been the only person who even bothered to speak to him, let alone speak a kind word.

"You have no idea," he muttered, turning his gaze back out over the ocean, letting his mind wander. 

The pair stood in silence for a while, both thinking about the loves for whom they traversed oceans and bent rules for. 

"Do you really think your plan will work?" Jack finally asked, turning his head to give the woman a respectful glance as he challenged her idea. 

"Do I think Peter will remember me, and James, and issue pardons?" She asked, her face rather blank and her voice neutral, showing the calibre of her breeding and life prior to Nassau. "I do. There is no other hope for Nassau without it."

He nodded, pursing his lips as if to argue, but rather remained silent. 

"You do not agree," she said, and while her voice rose at the end of her statement as if to indicate a question, it was indeed a statement of fact more than an inquiry. 

Shaking his head, Rackham straightened himself a little. "No, I do not, unfortunately," he admitted, pressing his hands into the sun warmed wood of the banister. "While some men might see pardons as a chance to start over, there will always be some men, men like the one we're chasing now, men like myself if I'm being entirely honest, who have no place in polite society." His words were earnest, and honest, and judging by the change in Miranda Barlow's expression, entirely unpredicted on her part. 

"You see, some men become pirates because there are no other options for them," he continued on, turning his back to the sea and watching the many men scurrying about, working the sails, moving barrels and basically keeping the ship moving. "Given the option, they'd be just as happy as merchant sailors, farmers, black smiths," he shook his head, mouth turning down at the corners. "For these men, your pardons will be welcome." He gestured to a few men going about their business, these were the few who fell in this first group, for which piracy was a means to an end, and little more. 

He shifted his gesture to another group, and continued. "For others,  most certainly I put myself, Charles and Anne in this category as well, piracy is more than a means to an end," he paused, thinking of the three of them as a cohesive group once more for the first time in a long time. "In one way or another we have all been slaves to someone else's desires, and I'm more than willing to bet your James Flint is no different. To people like us, piracy, the sea, the salt, the spray... It isn't just about taking what is your own, or someone else's, it's about freedom, and that, Madam, is not something one can receive through a pardon from the King alone."

Barlow seemed to listen to him, but Rackham was doubtful about how much the woman could really understand. For her freedom was an abstract concept about what one could and could not do, but for people who had been at the end of a lash, who had been confined, imprisoned or otherwise held against their will, freedom was a far more tangible thing. 

The pair settled into an uncomfortable silence, each becoming lost in their own thoughts .    



End file.
